THE TREATMENT OF FEVERS OCCURRING IN DIABETIC PATIENTS
Fevers increase the need for insulin.—Today, with insulin, a properly dieted patient is as robust and capable as his normal neighbor. His handicap is the continued necessity for keeping his enemy under control, but if this control is watchfully maintained, he should live as long and as useful a life as do his fellows. However, throughout his life he is exposed, as are his fellows, to diseases other than diabetes. Measles, mumps, scarlet fever, diphtheria, acute colds, influenza, pneumonia, and other germ diseases, the so-called infectious diseases, will attack him, and when they do they invariably aggravate his diabetes and, by preventing the utilization of his sugars, subject him to the danger of acid poisoning from smoldering fats. Therefore, when such complications occur, a patient must have insulin, whether he has been able to do without it before or not, and usually the doses necessary to control these critical emergencies must be large. For instance, a patient on a set diet, whose urine remains free from sugar with 20 units of insulin, may require 40 units daily whenever he takes cold. A serious infection like pneumonia may make it necessary to use 80 units of insulin daily. Under normal circumstances, a patient taking 20 or 30 units of insulin daily, does very well when this is divided into two doses of 15 units each, and one dose is injected before breakfast, and the second before the evening meal. During an attack of pneumonia or any other fever-producing complication, it may be necessary to resort to four injections, spaced at six-hour intervals. It is usually necessary to modify and reduce the diet when a patient is sick. It is always wise to eat less. In particular, the fat allowance of the diet should be reduced. It is wise not to reduce the carbohydrate. The patient with fever may be nauseated during the course of a fever and refuse all food. Under such circumstances, less insulin may be required; usually, however, large doses are still necessary. The reason for this is not clear, but apparently the poisons created in the course of germ diseases counteract the effect of insulin. During disease, the urine should be examined every six hours and the dose of insulin necessary may be judged from the amount of sugar found.