Tag: nephrology
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Irvine H. Page, M.D. (1901–1991)
Earl SmithChicago, Illinois, United States Irvine Page was a physician scientist who discovered angiotensin and serotonin and proposed the multifactorial etiology of hypertension. He was a prolific medical writer and was instrumental in establishing what is now the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Page initially intended to become a chemist. Following his graduation from Cornell…
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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…
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Nils Alwall—One of the founding fathers of nephrology
Mårten SegelmarkLund, Sweden 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 ago, medicine had little to offer to the patients with kidney diseases other than bed rest and tasteless diets, measures that only added new burdens to…
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Scarred for life
Shanda McCutcheonCalgary, Alberta, Canada 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 without even thinking about it. Life does not seem much different than it did a year ago, except that then I was embarking on…
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Korotkov’s Sound
Joseph deBettencourtChicago, Illinois, United States I’m watching, knees bending,Looking meek, my heart quiet,Drifting away are the shadowsOf fussy world affairsWhile I’m envisioning, dreaming ofvoices from other worlds -Aleksandr Blok, untitled poem, July 3, 1901a Stepping off the train in northern China, Nikolai Korotkov was the farthest he had ever been from home. He would have…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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A fatal and mysterious illness
Michael D. ShulmanPhiladelphia, 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 on dialysis…