Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Nephrology

  • 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…

  • A fatal and mysterious illness

    Michael D. Shulman Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   In late 1972, a flurry of letters began to appear in the British medical journal The Lancet which captured the alarm, the bafflement, and the intense professional curiosity aroused by a mysterious new illness. The illness was unique to patients receiving hemodialysis, typically those who had been…

  • Robert M. Kark (1911–2002)

    In the 1950’s, Robert Kark and his team of Robert C. Muehrcke, Victor Pollak, and Conrad Pirani became, for a short time, the dominant force in American nephrology by popularizing the use of kidney biopsy as a diagnostic tool. This technique had first been described by Scandinavian investigators with somewhat limited success, but the Kark team…

  • Dr. Willem J. Kolff: a great man

    George Dunea Chicago, IL In Memoriam Willem J. Kolff: A great man   Willem Kolff, often called the father of the artificial kidney,died in January 2009, 3 days before his 98th birthday. During his long life he received numerous honors and accolades for his work. Many people thought he should have received the Nobel Prize, but as he once…

  • The village uroscopist

    Alexandru SonocSibiu, Romania A physician sits in his studio at a table on which stand several covered vases. He has a book in his left hand and holds in his right hand a glass flask against the light coming in through the window. Nearby there is a furnace where his curing concoctions are prepared in…

  • Nephrology in 10 Steps

    Andrew Bomback New York, United States     Photography by COMSALUD 1 I was seeing patients in clinic the morning my daughter was born. My wife called me to say that her contractions, relatively weak and infrequent when I had left home a few hours earlier, had suddenly picked up. She asked how quickly I…

  • History of nephrology: beginnings

    George Dunea Chicago, Illinois, United States   Introduction In the second half of the 20th century nephrology became a fully-fledged specialty owing largely to the development of renal biopsy, dialysis, and kidney transplantation.1 Yet the seeds of these great advances were sown centuries earlier, based on the work and observations of scientists and clinicians dating…