While working on my amateur genealogy today, I came across this 1928 death certificate for my 74 year old great-great-great uncle citing “Diabetes Mellitus” as his cause of death, with “Diabetic Gangrene” as a secondary cause. This is the first death certificate citing diabetes in my family that I’ve found. I was quite surprised by it given the year. I need to brush up on my diabetes history to have a better idea of what doctors knew about the disease at that time.
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Here is a good place to start that @Richard157 shared.
Would be interesting to know when he was diagnosed, since insulin was in its infancy in the 1920’s.
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That’s really interesting. Given that he was 74 and he died of gangrene I sort of wonder whether he was T2 rather than T1. But of course at that time, there was no distinction.
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@Chris and @Richard157, thanks for the link to that video. Amazing story and history there.
@TiaG, I assume he was Type 2 like you said. If I find anything more, I will post it.
Thanks for recalling the video. I had not seen it for awhile.
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It’s possible he was someone with LADA? hard to say but he died in 1928? so that’d be 5 years after the mass marketing of insulin. All diabetics were treated with Insulin until at least like the 40’s I think? Type 1 and 2 weren’t even distinctively diagnosed until 1936. From what I understand though, type 1 always has been known of first since people died of it faster.
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