DIABETES MELLITUS.

Diabetes mellitus is a disease in the beginning of perverted nutrition, caused either by hereditary, functional or organic disease. There is some testimony that it may be communicated from one person to another. It also follows syphilitic lesions near the fourth ventricle of the brain. Later pathologic changes may occur in one or more of the following organs: pancreas, liver, heart, and Kidneys, also in the nerve centers of the cardiac and solar plexus. The perversion consists of the entrance in to the blood of an abnormal quantity of saccharine matter. This saccharine matter practically acts as a strong diuretic by producing hyperemia of the kidneys, which results in increased functional action manifested by the passage of large quantities of urine loaded with saccharine matter depuriated from the blood. While this perverted functional action of the kidneys is largely in excess of normal, it must be considered as a conservative