Detection of Inosit.--It has been said that inosit sometimes accompanies, and even substitutes, grape-sugar in the course of diabetes. It has been mentioned that it does not reduce Fehling's solution, but turns it olive-green. It reduces the carmine and alkaline picric acid solution, and is therefore not recognizable by these. The methods recommended for its recognition in the books are troublesome, and as its presence in the absence of sugar indicates a favorable change, it is not likely that a more precise recognition than is furnished by the olive-green reaction will be needed for clinical purposes. PROGNOSIS.--The prognosis in diabetes depends upon the organ whose {218} involvement is responsible for the symptoms, upon the stage at which the condition comes under observation, and upon the age of the patient. It has appeared to me that the cases of diabetes depending upon pancreatic disease are the most intractable, that their progress is scarcely checked by treatment, and that they are comparatively rapidly fatal in their termination. In the others, where the symptom is one of a central nervous lesion, it has always seemed to me to be of secondary importance that the glycosuria is itself less marked, that it is unattended by the other distinctive symptoms of diabetes, and that its issue is that of the nervous malady. Again, it is well known that the later in life diabetes occurs the more amenable it is to treatment, and that if a proper diabetic diet be adhered to by the patient his life need scarcely be shortened. On the other hand, diabetes mellitus is a disease in which the expectant plan is dangerous. If it does not improve it usually gets worse; and many a patient has fallen a victim to his own indifference and indisposition to adhere to a regimen under which he could have lived his natural term of life. This is especially the case when the disease appears after middle life. If, on the other hand, the condition becomes thoroughly established before twenty-five years of age, it is less amenable to treatment; but even in such cases a promptly vigorous treatment is sometimes followed by recovery. I have already mentioned the case of a child twelve years old in which complete recovery took place. If tubercular phthisis supervenes, recovery is not to be expected, while intercurrent disease, as pneumonia, which is rather prone to occur, is very much more serious and apt to terminate fatally.