"Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves." - Henri-Frédéric Amiel
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The Milestones of Diabetes in Traditional Chinese Medicine"The first Chinese doctors who clearly documented the sweet quality of the urine in a diabetic patient were the Zhen brothers (Quan Zhen and Liyan Zhen) in the Shui Dynasty. In their book
Records of Proven Formulas of the Past and Present (Gu Jin Yan Fang Lu) completed in
627 A.D, the authors said the patients would have intense thirst, emaciation, and enormous urine output. The urine could be oily or sometimes not and it tastes “as sweet as wheat”.
Many books and documentation written after the Zhens also talked about the sweetness of urine in patients of Xiao Ke, such as a few decades later in Tang dynasty, Langzhong Li in his
Discussions on Xiao Ke Formulas (Xiao Ke Fang Lun) said “when a patient suffers from Xiao Ke, his urine’s always sweet.”
Xianke Zhao of Ming Dynasty in his book
Differentiation and Analysis on the Characteristics of Medical Theory (Yi Guan, completed in
1687 A.D.) also mentioned “A patient of Xiao Ke will urinate a sheng (a Chinese unit similar to a liter) right after he drinks a sheng of water. If one tastes his urine, it should be sweet instead of salty.”
In
England, in a remarkable work
Pharmaceutice rationalis of Tomas Willis was published in
Oxford in 1674. Willis described the sweetish flavor of urine in diabetes mellitus, a fact not recognized since the time of early Hindu medicine. He also associated diabetes with "good fellowship and guzzling down of ... wine." His observations initiated a new era of diabetes research in
England. Matthew Dobson of
England in 1776 evaporated diabetic urine and found substance like brown sugar in appearance and taste. He also found a sweetish taste of sugar in the blood of diabetics. In 1797, John Rollo also in England,
successfully treated a patient with a high fat and protein diet after observing that sugar in the urine increased after eating starchy food."
I'm assuming all these people actually
tasted the urine.
Eww.