In the fifth century BCE, Sushruta noticed an odd little procession: ants moving toward some people’s urine. The attraction was not random. The urine, he concluded, was sweet and sticky, and the condition behind it needed a name.[1]
Sushruta, the ancient Indian physician and surgeon, described diabetes as madhumeha, or “honey-like urine,” after observing urine sweet enough to attract ants and linking the condition with wealthy people who ate heavily of rice, cereals, and sweets.
ThePrint’s excerpt from The Weight Loss Revolution says Sushruta connected the ant-attracting urine with a disease in which urine became sweet and sticky, then named it madhumeha.[1] The word carried the observation inside it. Madhu means honey, and meha refers to urine, so the diagnosis began as a description a person could see, touch, and even, in ancient medical practice, taste.[1]
Sushruta was not just a name attached to one strange diagnostic clue. He is remembered as an ancient Indian physician and surgeon and as the author associated with the Suśruta Saṃhitā, a major Sanskrit medical compendium.[2] Later accounts place him in Kashi, or Varanasi, and describe a medical tradition concerned with surgery, anatomy, obstetrics, toxicology, and disease description.[3]
The Ants Were the Evidence
Before blood chemistry and glucose monitors, the body left evidence where a careful physician could find it. Sushruta’s description of diabetes turned on visible traits: large amounts of urine, sweetness, stickiness, and the arrival of ants.[1][3] The Sanskriti account similarly describes madhumeha as a disease marked by the passage of large amounts of sweet urine, “honey like” in character.[3]
The later European vocabulary landed on a similar image from another direction. ThePrint notes that “diabetes” comes from ancient Greek, meaning siphon or “to pass through,” a reference to excessive urination, while “mellitus” is Latin for “honey-sweet.”[1] Across medical traditions, the same two features kept returning: too much urine, and urine with an unnatural sweetness.
Sushruta also noticed a social pattern. The people he associated with the disease were primarily from rich classes, and their diets were described as heavy in rice, cereals, and sweets.[1] The Sanskriti article adds that he connected diabetes with obesity and sedentary habits, and emphasized physical activity in its management.[3]
A Modern Disease With an Ancient Shape
Modern medicine describes diabetes through insulin and glucose rather than ants. Diabetes is a chronic condition in which the body either does not produce enough insulin or cannot use it well.[1] Insulin helps glucose enter cells and provide energy. When insulin is deficient or ineffective, glucose remains in the blood, where high levels can damage organs and tissues.[1]
Doctors now distinguish major types of the disease. Type 1 diabetes is usually an autoimmune disorder in which the pancreas cannot produce insulin, and insulin treatment remains mandatory.[1] Type 2 diabetes is usually accompanied by insulin resistance, and ThePrint notes that around 90 percent of people with diabetes have type 2.[1]
Sushruta did not know insulin, pancreatic beta cells, or blood glucose meters. What he had was a recurring pattern in ordinary life: certain bodies produced urine that insects wanted, and those bodies often belonged to people surrounded by abundance, starch, sweetness, weight, and little movement.[1][3]
Ants around urine are not a medical test anyone should use now. As medical history, though, the image remains unusually sharp. Long before “diabetes mellitus” became a formal phrase, Sushruta had watched the disease leave its sign in a sticky patch of urine and a line of ants moving toward it.
