““Nineteenth-century French physician Apollinaire Bouchardat observed that sugar in the urine of his patients diminished during the four-month-long siege of Paris by the Prussian army in 1870 when food, especially bread, was in short supply; after the siege was over, he mimicked the effect by advising patients to reduce consumption of breads and other starches and to fast intermittently to treat diabetes, despite the practice of other physicians who advised increased consumption of starches.””
