DIABETES

EXCESSIVE SECRETION OF URINE

This disease is characterized by copious discharges of sweet urine of a pale yellowish or greenish yellow color, and sometimes of a faint sweetish odor. The saccharine matter resembles grape sugar. The first symptoms which usually attracts the attention of the patient is the frequency of the calls to pass urine, and he generally soon notice that the quantity is increased, and sometimes he accidentally discovers that it is sweetish to the taste. The patient soon begins to be trouble with great thirst, the appetite often becomes craving, the mouth and throat dry and perched. There is a sensation of hollowness or sinking, with faintness at the pit of the stomach, and other dyspeptic symptoms with great debility and emaciation. The quantity of urine discharged usually varies from ten to twenty, and sometimes from thirty to fifty paints or more in twenty-four hours, and this often for weeks or months together. The specific gravity or weight of the urine is generally increased owing to the present of sugar. If sugar is present in any quantity you can detect it very readily short of tasting. Add a little yeast to some of the urine and set it down in a warm place, and if there is sugar present it will begin to ferment within twenty-four hours, whereas healthy urine will not go through the same process. Albumen is also sometimes present. This disease is very slow in its progress, sometimes lasting for many years, and in many cases patients die of some other affection, such as consumption, disease of the brain, liver, or stomach. Occasionally they die early in the disease from exhaustion occasioned by the profuse secretion.

We sometimes have a profuse glow of urine without the presence of sugar, caused by various nervous affections, especially hysteria, but this form of the disease is not usually serious.

The cause of sugar being found in the urine in diabetes has been long a question with medical writers. Some have supposed that the stomach and bowels are chiefly in fault, others that the liver secretes an excessive quantity in this disease, and some of the latest writers attribute it to deficient action of the lunge, in that the sugar which is formed in the blood which comes from the liver on its arrival in the lunges fails to be decomposed by the oxygen of the air, and to disappear as in health, but passes in the general circulation to the kidneys, and is there separated from the blood.

Treatment

General measures are perhaps more important than medicine, although the letter bay be of great service. As to diet it is necessary that it should be nutritious, but that it should contain neither sugar nor starch, therefore potatoes and fine flour in every form should be omitted. Give bran or canel bread with butter, beef or mutton, fowls and eggs, also cabbage and turnips. Let the patient drink moderately at a time, but in all about enough to relieve his thirst. Let him spend his time in the open air in taking active exercise, and follow the direction as to particular exercises contained in the section on consumption.

Carbo veg:

Give a dose of this remedy night and morning for two weeks, then continue it if there is any improvement, and as long as long as the patient continues to mend. After the above remedy has ceased to act, give Mercurius Viv. Night and morning, and continue it as long as there is any improvement. Veratrum can follow the above if it is needed, also Natrum Mur.