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What did we do before finger pricking?

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Lilmssquirrel

Active Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Parent of person with diabetes
So Mini Me has asked how blood sugar used to be regularly tested in the olden days before finger pickers and glucose monitors?

She wouldn't believe me it was done with sharpened crocodile teeth and Dock leaves...
 
Test tube which we put a clinitest tablet in then added 5 drops of wee + 10 drops of water waited while it changed colour. Colours would vary from blue = no sugar and bright orange which was full of sugar.
Obviously this was a complete waste of time as results depended on when you last had a wee 🙂 Oh and if you were a smartie pants and knew damn well your reading would be high due to sneaking food as a kid youngsters soon learnt to add extra water thus the true colour was never known 🙂
 
Pee sticks and just going on how you felt. Pee sticks are a bit useless really because they only tell you what was happening a few hours ago. But that was all there was until sometime in the 80s I think, well that was when my mum got her first blood meter anyway. Which i think is why my mum seems to see blood testing as more of a luxury rather than a necessity, and she makes no secret of the fact that she thinks we test far too often. I’ve tried many times to explain that's how they teach you to do it these days, especially when you are pumping because if the pump quietly stops working and can’t tell you of the fact, then you will go very high very quickly. But she doesn’t seem convinced! “I know how I feel and if I feel low I deal with it.” Yes, well, I don't know how my daughter feels, do I, and when she was younger she didn’t always know either, or couldn’t explain it, and you don’t want to be treating a low if she's actually high and vice versa!

Oops sorry for the mini rant there, think I got a bit carried away 🙄
 
Pee sticks are moderns :D Like Pumper Sue test tube, clinitest tablet, Wee drops and water drops. I remember once when the results were blue (negative) all day thinking that I was cured - but that was just a little girl’s hopeful dreams.
 
The first home BG measuring I had was by ‘BM sticks’ named after Boeringher Mannheim, the company that made them (some nurses still refer to all blood glucose results as BMs).

You applied a big ole droplet of blood to cover a pair of pads on the strip, waited a minute, then wiped it off with cotton wool, and waited another minute before trying to match the pair of colours against examples on the side of the pot... and made your best guess!
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
The first home BG measuring I had was by ‘BM sticks’ named after Boeringher Mannheim, the company that made them (some nurses still refer to all blood glucose results as BMs).

You applied a big ole droplet of blood to cover a pair of pads on the strip, waited a minute, then wiped it off with cotton wool, and waited another minute before trying to match the pair of colours against examples on the side of the pot... and made your best guess!
Click to expand...
Oh and to save money I had to cut the strips in half (GP instructions)
 
Oh yes I remember my mum had those and used to cut them in half also!

After daughter was diagnosed it took me ages to get used to referring to BG tests instead of BMs!
 
I thunk most people did the ‘cutting them in half‘ thing :D
 
Sally71 said:
Which i think is why my mum seems to see blood testing as more of a luxury rather than a necessity, and she makes no secret of the fact that she thinks we test far too often. I’ve tried many times to explain that's how they teach you to do it these days, especially when you are pumping because if the pump quietly stops working and can’t tell you of the fact, then you will go very high very quickly. But she doesn’t seem convinced! “I know how I feel and if I feel low I deal with it.” Yes, well, I don't know how my daughter feels, do I, and when she was younger she didn’t always know either, or couldn’t explain it, and you don’t want to be treating a low if she's actually high and vice versa!

Oops sorry for the mini rant there, think I got a bit carried away 🙄
Click to expand...

Hmmm...I have a mum like that 😉 doesn't have diabetes but generally knows better than everyone else...
 
Lilmssquirrel said:
She said that looks like the thing we test our hot tub with 😛
Click to expand...
Well we got hot fingers if we touched the test tube 🙂 Health and safety would probably ban it now lol.
 
It all felt very up to date at the time, as did the glass syringes and surgical spirit (but let’s not go there).I wonder what youngsters will think in 20 years time about how we test and monitor now? 🙂
 
The test tube method used Benidick's reaction where copper sulphate is oxidised to copper oxide if sugar is present. Copper sulpate is white until you add whater when it turns blue, copper oxide yellow, so a colour change indicates how much sugar is in the solution. A mixture of the two gave a range of colours to indicate how bad things had been, when compared to a chart.

The reaction needs heat to take place, so the first test kits contained a spirit lamp to heat up the test tube.

Some clever fellow knew that if you added sodium hydroxide and citric acid in water the heat of the reaction could eliminate the need for a spirit lamp.

Sodium hydroxide is deliquescent (it absorbs water from the air and become liquid). so that the tube of tablets had to be kept tightly closed.

After all that the test told you very little and you had to go around like an itinerant chemist with dangerous chemicals. Sodium hydroxide will burn the skin. You needed a supply of water, a container for the urine, a hard glass test tube and an eye dropper in the kit.

The test told you that at some time in the past few hours your BG had been above some unknown value known as your own renal threshold (anything between 10 - 14 mmol/L). A proper BG test required a vial of blood, a fully equiped bio lab, and took seven hours.

I am pleased that I can now do a BG test in seconds, even if it is not always accurate.
 
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