**2. A little bit of history**

The term 'diabetes' was first used by the Greeks. It was given by Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician, (129–199 AD). It means 'to pass through'; they used it to signify the large amount of water consumed and urine produced by diabetics. The term 'mellitus' was added by the Romans, meaning 'sweet as honey', when they noticed that the urine of diabetics was sweet.

In 1921, Canadian physician Frederick Banting (November 14, 1891 to February 21, 1941) and medical student Charles H. Best discovered the hormone insulin in the pancreatic extracts of dogs. Because the early insulin preparation required several injections daily, scientists worked hard to find ways to prolong its duration of action. H.C. Hagedorn, in the 1930s, who was a chemist in Denmark, prolonged the action of insulin by adding protamine. The first genetically engineered, synthetic 'human insulin' (first recombinant DNA human insulin) was produced in 1978 by David Goeddel and his colleagues (of Genentech) using *E. coli* bacteria.
