Fatal Thirst Diabetes In Britain Until Insulin

Using unpublished and published sources, this book examines the history of diabetes in Britain from the perspective of healer and sufferer alike, focusing on medieval treatments, Renaissance-era diabetology, and the centuries-long debate among specialists over the site and cure of the disease.

In 1922, an unlikely team of researchers in Toronto made one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the century: insulin. Their discovery seemed miraculous. When it was given to diabetic patients on the brink of death, their condition rapidly improved. Those present could barely believe their eyes: they had witnessed resurrection. However, this was no simple cure. Injections must be taken for life. Without them, symptoms quickly return, often with fatal results. But while a lifetime on insulin poses great challenges, it also offers opportunities. In this revelatory history, Stuart Bradwel looks back on one of medicine’s most celebrated innovations. Setting professional narrative against subjective patient experience, he tells the story of a drug that has challenged many of the basic assumptions upon which medical practice is built, both inside and outside the clinic. Nevertheless, Bradwel reminds us that the centenary of this apparent “wonder drug” should be no cause for celebration. Insulin often remains inaccessible to those who need it most: elusive prescriptions, uneven availability and sky-high prices result in rationing and desperate do-it-yourself research and development. In the face of bootstraps rhetoric and “Pharma Bro” capitalists, patients across the world are left to fend for themselves. There is a long way to go in the twenty-first century until insulin truly fulfils the extraordinary promises made by its discovery.

Here is an informative overview of diabetes mellitus in conjunction with plant-based treatments. It discusses available methods for studying the antidiabetic activities of scientifically developed plant products, mechanisms of action, their therapeutic superiority, and current genome editing research perspectives and biotechnological approaches. The book begins with an introduction to diabetes, giving a brief overview of the history, diagnosis, classification, pathophysiology, and risk factors. It goes on to review traditional uses of plants for diabetes along with ethnobotanical information. The results of scientific studies on the various modes of action of antidiabetic plants are discussed, such as the molecular aspects of active plantbased antidiabetic drug molecules. A section featuring recent biotechnological advancements of antidiabetic plants and plant-based antidiabetic drugs covers advances in molecular breeding and application of molecular markers, biotechnologically engineered transgenic medicinal plants, and advances in genomic editing tools and techniques.

This book provides an overview of the most up-to-date research on diabetic nephropathy and the current understanding of its pathogenesis, clinical features and socio-economic developments. Written by leading experts in the field, it provides a comprehensive synthesis of clinical and pathophysiological aspects from a mechanism-based point of view, and reviews evidence-based treatment modalities for the prevention and management of diabetic nephropathy. In addition, closely related areas such as diabesity, diabetic eye disease and macrovascular involvement in diabetes are addressed. Diabetic Nephropathy will be of interest for nephrologists, diabetologists, internists, transplant physicians, public health professionals, basic scientists, geneticists, epidemiologists, pathologists, and molecular and cell biologists working in the field of diabetes and its complications.

Who gets diabetes and why? An in-depth examination of diabetes in the context of race, public health, class, and heredity Who is considered most at risk for diabetes, and why? In this thorough, engaging book, historian Arleen Tuchman examines and critiques how these questions have been answered by both the public and medical communities for over a century in the United States. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Tuchman describes how at different times Jews, middle-class whites, American Indians, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans have been labeled most at risk for developing diabetes, and that such claims have reflected and perpetuated troubling assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. She describes how diabetes underwent a mid-century transformation in the public's eye from being a disease of wealth and "civilization" to one of poverty and "primitive" populations. In tracing this cultural history, Tuchman argues that shifting understandings of diabetes reveal just as much about scientific and medical beliefs as they do about the cultural, racial, and economic milieus of their time.

A history of the unsustainable modern diet—heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar—that requires more land and resources than the planet is able to support. We are facing a world food crisis of unparalleled proportions. Our reliance on unsustainable dietary choices and agricultural systems is causing problems both for human health and the health of our planet. Solutions from lab-grown food to vegan diets to strictly local food consumption are often discussed, but a central question remains: how did we get to this point? In Diet for a Large Planet, Chris Otter goes back to the late eighteenth century in Britain, where the diet heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar was developing. As Britain underwent steady growth, urbanization, industrialization, and economic expansion, the nation altered its food choices, shifting away from locally produced plant-based nutrition. This new diet, rich in animal proteins and refined carbohydrates, made people taller and stronger, but it led to new types of health problems. Its production also relied on far greater acreage than Britain itself, forcing the nation to become more dependent on global resources. Otter shows how this issue expands beyond Britain, looking at the global effects of large agro-food systems that require more resources than our planet can sustain. This comprehensive history helps us understand how the British played a significant role in making red meat, white bread, and sugar the diet of choice—linked to wealth, luxury, and power—and shows how dietary choices connect to the pressing issues of climate change and food supply.

This is the first book-length study of the award-winning historical drama The Tudors. In this volume twenty distinguished scholars separate documented history, plausible invention, and outright fantasy in a lively series of scholarly, but accessible and engaging essays. The contributors explore topics including Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, his other wives and family, gender and sex, kingship, the court, religion, and entertainments.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Middle English Medical Recipes and Literary Play, 1375-1500 is the first detailed, book-length study of Middle English medical recipes in their literary, imaginative, social, and codicological contexts. Analysing recipe collections in over seventy late medieval manuscripts, this book explores how the words and structures of recipes could contribute to those texts' healing purpose, but could also confuse, impede, exceed, and redefine that purpose. The study therefore presents a challenge to recipes' traditional reputation as mundane, unartful texts written and read solely for the sake of directing practical action. Crucially, it also relocates these neglected texts and overlooked manuscripts within the complex networks forming medieval textual culture, demonstrating that—though marginalized in modern scholarship—medical recipes were actually linguistically, formally, materially, and imaginatively interconnected with many other late medieval discourses, including devotional writings, romances, fabliaux, and Chaucerian poetry. The monograph thus models for readers modes of analysis and close reading that might be deployed in relation to recipes in order to understand better their allusive, fragmentary, and playful qualities as well as their wide-ranging influence on medieval imaginations.