OBESITY AND DIABETES: A REEVALUATION *

T H E recent popular acceptance of oral hypoglycemic agents necessitates renewed and heavy emphasis on the primary importance of controlling obesity in the management of concomitant diabetes mellitus. The use of these agents in the treatment of maturity-onset, mild diabetes, at least, is now firmly entrenched and widespread. Although they have proved their worth, in selected cases, by providing control of the disease while freeing significant numbers of this type of diabetic patient from the pain and inconvenience of daily insulin injections, there is still foremost among the dangers inherent in this long sought-for modality an enormous potentiality for abuse. Practical experience with large numbers of newly discovered diabetic patients has indicated that there is a natural repugnance toward self-injection, and many initial difficulties in mastering sterilization and the insulin in-jection technic. These and other objectionable aspects of insulin therapy have often served as strong inducements in obtaining eager cooperation, especially at first, with the weight-reducing diets indicated in the 80 to 90