Diabetes is a chronic disease, but diabetic coma is an acute disease. If this fact was recognized, deaths from diabetic coma should cease. It is high time they should cease for seven years have gone by since the discovery of insulin and the medical profession has been taught that insulin cures coma unless the patient is moribund. Why not abolish diabetic coma forthwith? This is the easiest and surest method of lowering diabetic mortality.
The diagnosis of diabetic coma depends largely on a history of its gradual onset. The patient has felt sick and looks and acts seriously ill rather than in collapse, as in insulin shock with tremor and sweating, unconsciousness or convulsions. Inquiry shows that insulin has been omitted or that the customary dose became inadequate, because the patient broke his diet or contracted an infection. Usually nausea, vomiting and pain, simulating serious abdominal disease, have led to