science · 28 February 1849 · 175 years ago
birth
Born 28 Feb 1849; died 5 Jan 1908 at age 58.
Friedrich Everhard Anton Joseph Julius Freiherr von Mering was a German physiologist, physician, pharmacologist and experimental pathologist, who jointly discovered that removal of the pancreas in a dog produces the symptoms of diabetes. He worked with Oskar Minkowski, who recognized the resulting polyuria and tested the animal’s blood for glucose, an indicator of diabetes. This led Minkowski to propose that the pancreas secreted some antidiabetic substance. Though they did not isolate it, they wrote a paper* reporting this finding. Thus diabetes, which had long been held to be a kidney disease, was recognized as pancreatic disorder. Edward Sharpey-Schafer coined the term insulin in 1915, some years in advance of its eventual isolation. Insulin is a hormone synthesized in the pancreas that is important for the body to make proper use of sugar.
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