... a little bit of history

by dr Andrea Tatavitto
Expert I Endocrinology and Spare Illness 
Doctor executive ASL Caserta 1 - Italy

Well-known for long time, diabetes mellitus was object of a lot of searches that conducted to very important discoveries in physiology, biochemistry and therapy. The first answer from the most illustrious and authoritative studious was the diet: a rapid travel shot on alimentary  regimes, during centuries, consents us a view of different ways to face illness in different ages.

Aulo Cornelio Celso
Latin naturalist lived in the first century a.C., alimony must be of astringent nature, like wine, that must be drunken undiluted; we drink it cold in the summer,  warm in the winter, but always in small quantities.

Areteo di Cappadocia (II cwntury a. C.)
Like nourishing, a milk and flour’s soup; fruit and sweet wine

Alessandro di Tralles (525 – 605 d. c.)
He recommended highly nutritious foods and  difficult to digest: meat, fish, lettuce and chicory.

Ezio di Amida (502- 575 a. C.)
He advised more nutritious meats (like park), but also eggs, milk, tubers and other foods that contained flour but above all refreshing vegetables, the best indicated drink was always wine.

Razi  Arab philosopher (850- 929 a. C.)
in the diet there were highly nutritious foods, wine, cream and infusions of barley with dietetic drink.

Jean Francois Fernel (1497 – 1558) 
Diana di Poitieres  and Enrico II’s doctor: he advised a special diet based on fat meat, cooked with lettuce, portulaca and sorrel;  he prescribed cold drinks, a decoction of barley with milk.

Zatacus Lusitamus   
Portuguese  doctor he advised ass’ milk.

Thomas Willis
he advised rise, vegetables and, like drink, an insolvent of barley with milk.

John Rollo Britannic marine’s doctor (1700).
The diet will be above all based on alimony of animal origin, regularly distributive during the day. At the breakfast: a litre and half of milk with an half litre of water of lime; bread and butter. At lunch: grease blood’ s pudding moderate use of meats and of pork fat difficult to digest. At dinner: alimony are the same concede at lunch.

In the first half of XIX sec. there were vegetables of a good choice nutrition and appetizing meats, good wines and mineral corroborating waters.

Apollinaire Bouchardat (1809- 1886)
He recommended to replace the greaves at the carbon hydrate and he advised alcohol that in his opinion, is a very important calories’s spring for diabetics. He advised not for milk because it has a lot of lactose but he recommended green pulses and gluten’s bread. He established some fast days; he showed the importance of a moderate hypo alimentation for diabetics, with physical exercise. Between the prohibited alimony he insert: all fruits, bread, pulses and carrots because the organism don’t use them and so they increase emission of sugar with urines.

Lanceraux 
french doctor: fat diabetic is relatively benign, and the patient can live for a long time, on condition to respect some sanitary measures; it behaved with benefit with suppression of alimony with a lot of flour and of sugary substances, and with precept of gluten’ s bread, of roast meats or grilled meats.

Rudolf Kulz (1845- 1895)
Doctor advised milk, potatoes and a strict diet with a lot of sugars in such a way as to gave back  at the organism last sugar.

Anthelme Brillant- Savaren  (1755- 1826) 
In his gastronomic play Physiologie du goût, published in the 1826, he showed the role that the table play in the social life. Here’ s that he wrote on this  subject: "the pleasure of the table is for all ages, of all conditions, of all countries ad of all days; it can be associated with all other pleasures and it can console us for their lost". Like Bouchardat, and some years before him, he blamed, in funny terms, stiffness of alimentary regime that it is ordained for diabetics and he judged so:<<oh, my God! You are all shocked, readers, oh my God! But you see how the teacher is barbarian! Here that with an only word proscribe all that we love, this is Limet’s bread, so white, the Achard’s biscuits, these biscuits of…, and a lot of  good things that is composed by flour and the butter, flour and sugar, with sugar and eggs! Without potatoes and macaroni! Can we wait for these prohibition by a person that seem so prudent?

Sir Thoams Lavder Bruton 
used raw meat: he believed, in this way, to supply useful glycolytic ferments.

R. D. Lawrence 
after discovery of insulin, he wrote in the book “the diabetic life”: diabetic won’t suffer the fain and the thirst. Now he can choose between a big quantity of foods, according to his taste and his possibilities, and he can deduce sufficient energy for any occupation in the every life. Nowadays diet has a very important place in the Diabetic treatment.