Some historical aspects of diabetic foot disease

During the 19th century and for much of the 20th century, disease of the lower limb in diabetic patients was conceptualized not, as it is now, as 'the diabetic foot' or as 'a diabetic foot ulcer' but as 'gangrene in the diabetic foot' or as 'diabetic gangrene'. The prognostically and therapeutically important distinction between gangrene due to vascular insufficiency and gangrene due to infection in a limb with a normal or near normal blood supply was not made until about 1893. The advent of aseptic surgery improved the survival of amputation flaps, but surgery remained a hazardous undertaking until the discovery of insulin. Although insulin therapy reduced the risk of surgical intervention, diabetic foot disease now replaced hyperglycaemic coma as the major cause of diabetic mortality. The increasing workload attributable to diabetic foot disease after the introduction of insulin is reflected in the publications on diabetes in the 1920s. In some hospitals in North America this led to initiatives in prophylactic care and patient education, the importance of which were only more widely appreciated some 60 years later. A continuing emphasis on ischemia and infection as the major causes of diabetic foot disease led to a neglect of the role of neuropathy. In consequence, the management of diabetic neuropathic ulceration entered a prolonged period of therapeutic stagnation at a time when significant advances were being made in the management of lepromatous neuropathic ulceration. Reasons for the revival of progress in the management of diabetic neuropathic ulceration in the 1980s will be discussed.