in India, China, and Egypt, around 1500 B.C. as "the passing of large quantities of urine which often drew ants and flies". About 1700 years ago, the Greeks gave us the name diabetes, meaning "to run water through a siphon." This alluded to the frequent urination experienced by diabetics. Later writings, such as the Egyptian Papyrus Ebers, "recommended that those afflicted with the disease go on a diet of bear, fruits, grains, and honey...to stifle the excessive urination." Several hundred years later, the Greeks discovered that the urine of diabetics tasted sweet. To this effect, they added the name mellitus, or honey.
             The centuries that followed resulted in the creation of chemical tests to indicate the presence of sugar in the urine. In the late 19th century Italian diabetes specialist, Catoni was reported to have isolated "his patients, under lock and key in order to get them to follow their diets". Also around that time, in 1869, German medical student Paul Langerhans discovered that the pancreas was made up of two different types of cells. One of these cells secreted the normal pancreatic juice, while the function of the other remained a mystery. A few years later, the function of these cells were identified and appropriately named the islets of Langerhans. By 1922, Drs. Fredrick Banting and Charles Best isolated a powerful insulin extract from the pancreas of a dog and tested it on fourteen year-old Leonard Thompson. It was reported that he "began recovering his colour and health within hours of his first dose of the pancreatic extract." Since then history reports of the formation of many organizations such as the Canadian Diabetes Association to educate people about diabetes. Many breakthroughs, such as the development of biosynthetic human insulin and of the insulin pen system, have also surfaced.
             As history progresses we have begun to understand more and more about diabetes and its unbalancing tendencies.
             The human...