Excerpt from Modern Methods in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Glycosuria and Diabetes

The present monograph follows the same lines as my small volume on Renal Disease. It aims at giving to the busy general practitioner a short and concise account of our present knowledge of diabetes and glycosuria in so far as this knowledge bears on the clinical aspect of these conditions. A good deal of space has been devoted to the changes in blood-sugar concentration resulting from the ingestion of carbohydrate in the normal individual. This aspect of the subject is an important one, for no true idea of the mechanism by which glycosuria is produced can ever be obtained unless the main facts of normal blood-sugar variations are grasped.

The estimation of blood-sugar is now a simple process and can be successfully undertaken by any medical man with the minimum of chemical equipment. Blood-sugar estimations, carried out in connection with the ingestion of some carbohydrate, provide more information in glycosuric and diabetic cases than any other method, and it is certain that the future will see a great extension of this means of investigation.

A word as to the results of the modern method of dietetic treatment of diabetes, for which we are so largely indebted to Allen, is perhaps necessary here. In my experience the treatment has, in general, entirely failed to fulfil the hopes with which it was originally launched, and many of the claims made on its behalf are not justified by the results. The ease with which sugar disappears from the urine during the early stages of treatment frequently conveys the impression, and encourages the hope, that the patient has undergone a cure.

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