from Terry O.
to cj@thiscrazytrain.com
July 16, 2011
subject Summer Convos
I know you find other people's conversations funny so I'd like to share my own experience from this morning while riding in from Ajax for a day of shopping.
Two college age females were sitting across from me and were discussing diseases and how neither of them would like a disease named after them, "Like, So and So syndrome." All of a sudden, one of them makes a face and says, "Like the guy who discovered Diabetes! Imagine your family name being associated with that? Hi, I'm Mr. Diabetes." "Or Lou Gerrick (sic)," says her friend.
Face palm. Imagine these two in school: "Can someone tell me who discovered diabetes?"
"Some guy named Diabetes?"
Ha ha ha. No.
Best,
Terry.
5 comments:
I thought it was mr. diabetes also..
its not?
Uh, no.
Diabetes isn't named after anyone.
Diabetes is named for one of its distressing symptoms. The disease was known to the Greeks as diabts, a word derived from the verb diabainein, made up of the prefix dia-, "across, apart," and the word bainein, "to walk, stand." The verb diabeinein meant "to stride, walk, or stand with legs asunder"; hence, its derivative diabts meant "one that straddles," or specifically "a compass, siphon." The sense "siphon" gave rise to the use of diabts as the name for a disease involving the discharge of excessive amounts of urine. Diabetes is first recorded in English, in the form diabete, in a medical text written around 1425.
Maybe they were thinking about Banting & Best, and got confused? Mmmmmm. Scratch that. Not likely.
Banting and Best discovered insulin, and using dogs, learned how insulin helped animals and humans cope with diabetes. They did not discover diabetes.
Type 1, I know who Banting and Best are. That was my point about the girls maybe being confused. Never mind.
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