Diabetes: The Biography

Abstract

Diabetes: The Biography is part of the Oxford Biography of Disease Series, a collection of monographs that tell the story of one disease throughout history. In this biography, diabetic specialist Robert Tattersall traces medical and popular ideas about diabetes from its mention in an Egyptian papyrus to the present. In this remarkably succinct, comparative, and engaging book, Tattersall offers a comprehensive and thorough history that reveals many of the nuances of this disease and treatments for it. Diabetes is a complicated disease, which includes a variety of types within it, most notably type 1 and type 2. Moreover, although the twentieth-century innovations of insulin and oral hypoglycemic agents have created a rich modern history of the illness, there is a much longer history that includes efforts to explain, diagnose, cure, and treat the disease. Diabetes encompasses these stories and more, carefully conveying a narrative that highlights shifting ideology about the disease and how such ideas impacted society's response to it. Although much of the focus is centered on Europe, Tattersall is comparative throughout, considering emerging and competing ideas in North America, Asia, and elsewhere. The author is attentive to detail, and the text offers much insight about competing standards of diabetic care, the impact of twentieth-century technology, and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry in response to the epidemic of diabetes.