THE word diabetes comes from the Greek verb Sa,aivco (diabaino) which means I go or I run through; and StapATriS (diabetes) the thing the fluid runs through, that is a siphon or a water-pipe. The term diabetes seems to have been introduced into medical nomenclature by Aretaeus (Hirsch 1883, Reed 1954, etc.). Aretaeus' description of the disease runs, according to Francis Adams' translation of 1...

The name Aretaeus of Cappadocia has been linked with diabetes more than that of any other physician of antiquity, his texts forming a sophisticated synthesis of the previous knowledge on this disease copiously supplemented by his own observations. Gifted with a unique faculty for observing pathologic phenomena, he was able to elaborate upon earlier texts enriching them with his own original fin...

Aretaeus of Cappadocia is considered as one of the greatest medical scholars of Greco-Roman antiquity after Hippocrates. He presumably was a native or at least a citizen of Cappadocia, a Roman province in Asia Minor (Turkey), and most likely lived around the middle of the second century (A.D.) His eight volume treatise, written in Ionic Greek, entitled On the Causes, Symptoms and Cure of Acute ...

Aretaeus of Cappadocia composed a vivid description of diphtheria, noting the symptoms, complications, as well as the remedies to cure it. He was the medical author who used the terms "eschara" and "diphtheres" which are still in use by modern physicians, and the first who recognized the croup. His alum remedy has stood the test of time and is nowadays still under study.