Diabetes, then and now

“YOUR grandfather was a greedy and lazy man.” I was brought up with these words ringing in my ears. Grandfather died when I was just one and I do not remember him at all, except from what I was told through the decades. I knew though that he died of gangrene in his foot. He developed the gangrene during the terrible years of World War II.

He never had any medical care except for the ministrations of my uncle’s wife, who came over daily to change the dressing for the foul-smelling wound. I suppose she was then the best qualified person to do so as uncle was a male nurse. He was in Thailand then, sent to give medical aid to the people who were constructing the famed Bridge on the River Kwai, and nobody knew when, or even if, he would return.