MERING, JOSEPH, FREIHERR VON

(baron of) born Feb. 28, 1849, Cologne died Jan. 5, 1908, Halle an der Saale, Ger. German physician, physiologist, pharmacologist, and experimental pathologist. His discovery (with Oskar Minkowski) that removing the pancreas from dogs produces the symptoms of diabetes led to the discovery that insulin, synthesized in the pancreas, is a hormone important to the body's utilization of sugar. At the University of Strassburg (188690) Mering and Minkowski attempted in 1889 to disrupt fat digestion in dogs by removal of the pancreas, the only organ known to secrete a fat-degrading enzyme; instead, the animals exhibited the symptoms of diabetes, a disease resulting from retention in the blood of sugar. As director of the medical clinic in Halle (190008), Mering worked with the German chemist Emil Fischer to develop (190205) the barbiturates known as barbital, veronal, and proponal.