Diabetes has been recognised since antiquity. The first description that resembles the features of the disease is found in Ebers papyrus (1550 BC). The term ";diabetes"; was first coined by Aretaeus of Cappadocia. Galen described it as a disease specific to the kidneys because of a weakness in their retentive faculties. Word mellitus was added by Thomas Willis in 1675 after rediscovering the sweetness of urine and blood of patients (first noticed by the ancient Indians, Chinese and Japanese). He later noticed that some urine samples were sweet (diabetes mellitus) whereas others were tasteless (diabetes insipidus). Later Cullen and John Rollo confirmed these two types. It was only in 1776 that Dobson firstly confirmed the presence of excess sugar in urine and blood as a cause of their sweetness. Claude Bernard discovered in 1857 that liver releases a substance i.e. glycogen which affects blood sugar level. The role of the pancreas in pathogenesis of diabetes was discovered by Mering and Minkowski in 1889. In 1909, Jean De Meyer named glucose lowering hormone as insulin whose existence was hypothetical at that time. Banting and Macleod got Noble prize for isolating insulin in 1923. Discovery of insulin for the treatment of diabetes represents one of the major humanitarian and scientific milestones of the 20th century. Oral hypoglycemic drugs were introduced later. Today researchers are working on insulin patch, implantable pump, insulin-sensitizers, pancreatic or islet cell transplantation and oral insulin solution.