Read in the Section on Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica, of Am. Med. Association, May, 1884.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—It would not be possible, within the limits to which this paper is necessarily restricted, to discuss satisfactorily the pathology or even the clinical history of diabetes mellitus, although the disease in question is one of the most interesting, as well as obscure affections which the physician is called upon to treat. While the study of diabetes and its attendant disorders of general nutrition presents difficulties, as regards questions of causation and pathology, that seem almost insurmountable, when attention is once directed to the simple problem of the presence of sugar in the urine, this condition is now easily and certainly recognizable. It is probably true that sugar exists in the urine of a certain number of persons, unattended with symptoms, so that it is detected only by accident or