The treatment of diabetes mellitus has four principal objectives: (a) the relief of symptoms, (b) the maintenance of normal nutrition, (c) the preservation of the insulin producing capacity of the pancreas, and (d) the prevention or minimizing of complications. In most cases, only a rudimentary knowledge of dietetics and insulin will enable the physician to relieve symptoms. The maintenance of normal nutrition is not much more difficult, granted the cooperation of the patient. The obese must be made leaner, the lean fatter, and persons of normal weight must not be permitted to gain or lose.
The statement that the insulinogenic power of the pancreas should be preserved implies that diabetes is basically a condition of insulin deficiency, either absolute or relative. There is increasing evidence that this is true.1 Wrenshall and his colleagues,2 for example, recently reported that the average amount of insulin extractable from the pancreas in