Diabetes and Pregnancy *Read 8th December 1926.

Diabetes occurring in association with pregnancy is a condition of the utmost gravity. It is one fraught with danger to both mother and child, and, in dealing with it, the skill of the obstetrician and of the physician may be alike put to the test. Fortunately, the complication is a rare one, for diabetes exerts an unfavourable influence upon the reproductive functions, giving rise at first to a functional disturbance of ovulation and later to atrophic and sclerotic changes in the ovaries and uterus, with resulting sterility, sexual frigidity, and disorders of menstruation. Menstruation is absent in about 50 per cent, of diabetic women, while only some 1 to 5 per cent, of married diabetic women during the child-bearing period become pregnant. Evidence is now available which shows that with insulin treatment it is possible to restore all the reproductive functions, provided that organic changes have not proceeded so far as to render return of function impossible