Present knowledge of Diabetes Mellitus admits different definitions depending on the points of view. 
Upon analyzing its significance from the historical-social perspective we discover a turning point, a fundamental change on 1922, with the application of insulin-therapy in Clinical Medicine  
At the beginning of XX century the term DM was limited to name a pancreatic disease that produced disturbances in the metabolism of sugars.  Treatment depended on the nutrition area, the prognosis depended on the speed of the acute evolution (in a few weeks or months) into malnutrition, dehydration and Ketoacidosis or Diabetic Coma. It had a poor social transcendence. 
With the application of insulin-therapy and oral hypoglucemiants, the Nourishment Laws (Escudero´s Laws), the evolution in Metabolic Control Tests, Technological Revolution and the higher life span, the concept of DM progressively started to change.                                                                                                                                                                       Today, DM can no longer be considered as a single disease but as a Group of Diseases of Multifactor Origin, a Syndrome with Hyperglycemia as a common sign in the context of an Intermediate Metabolism Global Disorder. Its care requires a Multidiscipline Team (including both the patient and the diabetes specialized doctor). The prognosis depends on Chronic Complications (several years old), mostly vascular. It is an important Public Health Care Issue affecting close to 8 % of Argentine population, with tangible costs derived from treatment and control, as well as from the consequences of chronic and acute complications and intangibles related to the accompanying suffering.

DM Comparative Chart – Historical- Social Perspective

After having seen the above comparative chart we could say that we have advanced through the confrontation with progressively more complex situations , with a dynamics that is characteristic to all evolutionary processes, as life itself is. In the case of DM, the issue became so complicated that it might seem naïve to trust (as it happens in our lives) scientific-technological development as the only tool to give answers to all these changes.