There isn’t a single person who “discovered” diabetes, but several key figures across history contributed to recognizing and defining it.

Quick Scoop

  • Around the 5th century BCE, the Indian physician Sushruta described a condition with “honey-like urine” that attracted ants, an early clinical recognition of what we now call diabetes.
  • In the 2nd century CE, Aretaeus of Cappadocia gave the first detailed description of the disease and introduced the term “diabetes” (meaning “to pass through,” referring to excessive urination).
  • In the 17th century, English physician Thomas Willis added the word “mellitus” (“honey-sweet”) after noting the sweet taste of urine, coining the modern name diabetes mellitus.
  • In 1889, Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mering showed that removing a dog’s pancreas caused severe diabetes, linking the disease to the pancreas.
  • In 1921, Frederick Banting and Charles Best , with John Macleod and James Collip , isolated and purified insulin , turning diabetes from a rapidly fatal illness into a treatable chronic condition.

So, diabetes as a disease was recognized and named over many centuries, but its life‑saving treatment with insulin is credited mainly to Banting, Best, Macleod, and Collip.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.