Diabetes in reference of Graeco-Arab physicians: A review

Abstract

Diabetes is derived from the Greek term “Diabanmo” means “fleeting through”. In Unani medicine generally, we use “Ziabetus” for diabetes. Unani Philosophers considered Ziabetus (Diabetes) as a kidney disease. Unani Medicine is an antiquated arrangement of pharmaceutical amalgam that uses a wide diverse routine for diagnosing and treating various restorative conditions. Diabetes is one of the topmost killer diseases of manhood. While it affects all the group of society, its impact is mainly on wealthy society. Today’s description of diabetes has almost stabilized, which mainly revolves around the role of pancreas, insulin, and its peripheral resistance along with other causes, to a minor extent; though, this description needs reconsideration. Various Traditional complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) therapy claim attractive concepts and line of management are in vogue. In all TCAM (Traditional Complementary and Alternative Medicine) systems Unani system is one of the oldest among TCAM, which has an entirely holistic & different concept to understand all aspects of diabetes and offer a range of various regiments to counter this disease. Unani physicians and philosophers have a completely different vision of this disease. Jalinus (Galen/131-201 AD) was aware with both types of diabetes, and he labelled both forms in his two different literatures. This paper is an attempt to explore the causes, etiology and concept of diabetes in USM. Classical Unani literature like Al-Qanoon has been reviewed and all the related articles pertaining to the topic from Google and PubMed have been reviewed. In this paper, the authors is describing the concept of diabetes and usool-e-ilaj (principals of treatment) through the classical Unani literature.