EDITORIALS Who is a Diabetic?

FOR MANY CENTURIES and until quite re-cently, the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus has been easy. Aretaeus reported that the patient suffered from "a melting down of the flesh and limbs into urine' ' and that sooner or later "the melting is rapid, the death speedy. " This unsatisfactory state of affairs stirred the continuing interest of physicians and eventually led to the mo-mentous events of 1921. It soon became clear, however, that while insulin treat-ment rescued the diabetic from a speedy death, it left him liable to later crippling or fatal vascular disease. It has also become clear that there are many more adult-onset diabetics for whom melting flesh is not