DIABETES

a disease resulting from the non-a imilation of food in the stomach, liver, kidneys, or in the blood. It is marked by exce ive thirst and great bodily emaciation. Dieting and fasting, as tried during the past few years, has proven a check, rather than,a cure, of diabetes. But the total number of cases has continually increased, as proved by the rejections of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., which was 5.7 per 1,000, in 1921, as compared to 4.5 per 1,000 in 1919. Unfortunately the fasting remedy is usually resorted to when degeneration of the pancreas has already set in, to which must be added the fact that few persons are able to adhere to a strict diet regime. In 1921 Dr. Frederick G. Banting, of the University of Toronto, made an extract of that portion of the pancreas which is destroyed by diabetes, which had the effect of checking the progre of diabetes in dogs, and decreasing the production of sugar. With this extract, known as insulin, a number of very severe cases were treated during 1922, some of them having already entered the final stage of coma, the disease being arrested in all cases. It is still too early to state pos i-| tively that insulin will prove a cure for diabetes, but there seems no doubt that it can check it at a stage too late even for the dietetic treatment.