The formal name of diabetes, diabetes mellitus, comes from the Greek word for a siphon, “diabainein,” and from the word “mellitus,” which means “like honey,” because people who have the disease frequently urinate and their pee smells sweet.

The disease has been known since antiquity, and many have tried to treat it. In ancient Egypt, doctors mixed water from bird ponds with various roots and herbs, such as elderberry, fibers from a local plant, beer, cucumber flowers and dates, according to Diabetes Spectrum.

By 1916, Massachusetts scientist Elliott Joslin had showed that a high-fat, low carbohydrate diet could slow the progression of the disease, although people still succumbed to it eventually.