Alloxan diabetes: a discovery, albeit a minor one

Abstract

The remarkable discovery that a single injection of alloxan can produce diabetes mellitus in laboratory animals was made in 1942, in Glasgow, by John Shaw Dunn and Norman McLetchie. Alloxan, a simple nitrogenous organic compound, had made a long journey to get to Glasgow - it belongs to the very origins of systematic organic chemistry - from Germany. It was discovered by the fathers of this science, Frederick Wöhler and Justin J. Liebig, beginning with the synthesis of urea in 1828, then of uric acid and the naming of some 13 derivatives of uric acid, including alloxan. The name 'alloxan,' given by Wöhler and Liebig, is recorded as being derived from a combination of allantoin (a product of uric acid among others excreted by the fetus into the allantois) and 'oxalsaüre' (oxaluric acid derived from oxalic acid and urea, found in urine).