Treatment of Diabetes.

No occasion offers itself to me to present to my readers a treatment for diabetes mellitus which seems to contain a reasonable idea, that I do not avail myself of the opportunity.

A writer in a recent number of The Medical Record reports the treatment of a case, that of a physician sixty-two years of age, with ten per cent of sugar. The following is his treatment: Powdered capsicum, thirty grains three times a day in capsules. This reduced the sugar one-half and the effect lasted several weeks.

Grindelia robusta was given in dram doses of the fluid extract three times daily with the same result. Saw palmetto in two-dram doses three times a day had the same effect. Chimaphila in two-dram doses of the fluid extract was taken in a glass of milk and proved most effective.

In twenty-three days the success was pronounced. Within ten days more the doctor reduced the remedy one dram and the patient ate a large portion of starchy food, when the sugar returned. A resumption of the two-dram doses caused the sugar to disappear again. This in other patients the doctor has found to be reliable.

As soon as the sugar disappears he gives arsenic in small doses and continues it for at least two months, when if the sugar does not re-appear, starchy food is resumed. At any time thereafter if the sugar appears the anti-diabetic diet is resumed with a full dose of the medicine. The writer believes this course will cure many cases.

Ellingwood's Therapeutist, Vol. 2, 1908, was edited by Finley Ellingwood M.D.