Saul Bellow visits a dialysis unit
The Dean’s December, published in 1982, is a highly autobiographical book written by Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow.1 It is about the experiences of a university Dean and is divided into two episodes.2 The first takes place in Bucharest, where the Dean visits his mother-in-law, once a prominent but now politically disgraced party member lying […]
Nils Alwall – one of the founding fathers of nephrology
Mårten Segelmark Lund, Sweden Figure 1. Nils Alwall in 1965 with one of the first long-time survivors. (Picture archive of the South Swedish Society for History of Medicine) More than two million people suffering from kidney failure are currently being kept alive by dialysis. But when Nils Alwall was a young doctor eighty years […]
Scarred for life
Shanda McCutcheon Calgary, Alberta, Canada Three Months Post Donation, Michael, his wife Rebecca and their two youngest children with Shanda (far right) Source: Personal photograph of author Most mornings I wake and it does not seem like it happened at all. Still half asleep, I step under the cascading waters of a warm shower […]
Korotkov’s Sound
Joseph deBettencourt Chicago, Illinois, United States A portrait of Nikolai Sergeevich Korotkov I’m watching, knees bending, Looking meek, my heart quiet, Drifting away are the shadows Of fussy world affairs While I’m envisioning, dreaming of voices from other worlds -Aleksandr Blok, untitled poem, July 3, 1901a Stepping off the train in northern […]
Sir William Gull, polymath and pioneer physician
William Gull (1816-1890) is remembered by nephrologists as one of the prominent Guy’s Hospital physicians who worked to extend the seminal observations first made by Richard Bright. These investigators worked at a time when blood measurements were not available in clinical medicine and the role of hypertension in causing disease was not appreciated. They tried […]
History of nephrology vignettes
Hippocrates: “Those whose urine is merely blood-stained have suffered in the veins. When urine is thick, and there are passed with it small pieces of flesh like hair, you must know that these symptoms result from the kidneys and arthritic complaints.” Bubbles appearing on the surface of the urine indicate disease of the kidneys and […]
High blood pressure and the kidney: the forgotten contribution of William Senhouse Kirkes
Excerpt from: “High blood pressure and the kidney: The forgotten contribution of William Senhouse Kirkes” by J. Stewart Cameron and Jackie Hicks The realization of the key role for raised intra-arterial pressure as a pathogenetic agent in hypertension is usually credited to Ludwig Traube. But Traube in his writings gives credit for the idea to a […]
The true discoverer of essential hypertension
Frederick Akbar Mahomed (1849–1884) may justly be deemed the true discoverer of essential hypertension and the originator of the concept that high blood pressure could damage the kidneys and blood vessels. Grandson of an Indian immigrant and physician at Guy’s hospital, he unfortunately died of typhoid fever at the early age of 35. Using a […]
Jean-Baptiste de Sénac
Jean-Baptiste de Sénac (1693–1770) is believed to have studied medicine at the University of Leyden and in London. He began to practice medicine in Paris in 1723 and served as the personal physician to King Louis XV. He studied the heart in an era when cardiology was rudimentary. In 1749 he published a book on cardiology in which he described […]
Pierre Rayer (1793- 1867) – first to use microscopy to study kidney disease
Pierre Rayer occupies a special place in the history of nephrology for his attempt to classify the various diseases that Richard Bright had described in his monumental publication of 1827. With his intern Eugene Napoleon Vigla, he revolutionized the study of kidney diseases by using microscopy to analyze urinary sediments, describing crystals, cells, casts, and […]