Medicine: Skin Diabetes

If the much-enduring, much-lamenting Job could have had his afflictions diagnosed by a modern doctor, one of them might have turned out to be “independent cutaneous glycohistechia.” A simpler name for it: “skin diabetes.”

Ordinary diabetics have surplus sugar in the blood and urine. Fairly common diabetic symptoms are an itching skin or boils and sores. Analysis may show too much sugar in the skin.

In last week’s Journal, of the American Medical Association, Philadelphia’s Dr. Erich Urbach described a few patients who evidently had diabetes, but whose symptoms were only skin deep. Both blood and urine were normal, but their skins broke out, or itched, and gave a high sugar test. The diagnostic clincher: their skins cleared up after diabetic treatment (insulin and diet).