[CHAPTER III]
When, years ago, my attention was first attracted by the idea that, for the solution of our problem, we ought to turn our attention to the sugar in normal urine, no very exact tests for sugar were possible. The reactions were not very sensitive, the fact being that the surest evidence of the presence of sugar was obtained not from the reduction processes but from the method used by Brücker for preparing a potassium compound of sugar.
Every investigation which I undertook in his times for the confirmation of my theory was very arduous. The few cases which I at first had under observation presented formidable difficulties. The occasion of my first turning my attention to sugar in the urine was a case of a woman who had borne five children, and, after violent and continuous mental excitement, was suddenly seized with diabetes mellitus. I frequently examined her urine, and always found an abnormal amount of sugar. She had twice given birth to children whilst suffering from diabetes, and on each occasion the child was a female. This fact struck me, because previously, whilst she was strong and well, she had borne sons only. But, on the appearance of the disease mentioned, she had two daughters in succession, of whom the first one lived and the other was still-born.
I numbered amongst my acquaintances a family, of whom, in the course of years, I was acquainted with the grandmother, a daughter, and two grand-daughters. The grandmother had, including the third generation, fifteen descendants, of whom twelve were girls and three were boys. Two of the boys were the sons of the grandmother, and the first two children she had borne. She was under medical treatment, and the analysis of the urine showed a considerable quantity of sugar. She had six daughters. One of these daughters, who survived the others, had five children, amongst them one boy, who soon died.
Two of the grand-daughters of this family became mothers, each bearing one daughter. I had the opportunity of examining the urine of all the mothers of this family, and always found sugar in it. Sometimes the saccharine contents reached a remarkable quantity, and yet were not such as could be diagnosed to indicate an unhealthy condition.
Amongst the acquaintances of my youth was a young lady of good family. Carefully reared, she was, as a child, too much sheltered from the influences of the open air, and in later years much imprisoned in-doors by hard study in different branches of art and science. As a young lady she was fairly tall and well nourished, but pale and possessed of little color.
It happened that I had an opportunity of examining this young lady’s urine. As I found a considerable quantity of sugar, I was led to the conclusion that the girl (she was engaged) would have principally female offspring.
Many years had elapsed. The young lady had ripened into a stately matron, and told me that she had the happiness to be the mother of five daughters and a son. I am altogether without the statistics necessary to deduce from a great number of similar cases the average relative number of the sexes born of women suffering from diabetes. But this must be pointed out, that, notwithstanding the high percentage of sugar excreted in the case of women suffering from pronounced diabetes, female offspring do not necessarily always appear. They will probably be in a very striking majority when compared with the males, but the complete disappearance of the male sex is not to be anticipated, because male individuals, though in the minority, can appear. And this was to be anticipated, seeing that in the so-called slighter cases of this complaint the abnormal metabolism can be sensibly improved by attention to diet.