Joseph von Mering
Encyclopedia : J : JO : JOS : Joseph von Mering
Joseph, Baron von Mering (born February 28, 1849, in Cologne - died January 5, 1908, at Halle an der Saale, Germany) was a German physician.
Mering was the first person to discover (in conjunction with Oskar Minkowski) that one of the pancreatic funcions is the production of insulin, a hormone which controls blood sugar levels.
Mering was curious about the pancreas, a comma shaped organ, that was situated between the stomach and the small intestine. In an effort to discover its function, he removed the organ from a dog. The dog was then noticed frequently urinating on the floor, although it was house trained. Mering realised that this was a symptom of diabetes and tested the urine which was found to be high in sugar, confirming their suspicion.
References
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.