Tag: Richard Bright
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John Bostock and hay fever
JMS PearceHull, England Before the 1800s, hay fever, now estimated as affecting 5–10% of Western populations, was not widely recognized by physicians. James MacCulloch MD FRS, a doctor and geologist, in 1828 was the first to use the term hay fever, which he said was “a well-known disorder.”1 The surgeon William Gordon used the term…
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Sir John Pringle, public health and military medicine pioneer
At the end of the eighteenth century, Scottish doctors were more popular with patients than English ones because “their useful knowledge contrasted with the ornamental learning of English physicians who were Anglican or Oxbridge trained.”1 By 1825 almost 70% of all fellows and licentiates of the Royal College of Physicians were Scottish educated, including Richard…
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Harry Goldblatt and the kidney
In 1928 Dr. Harry Goldblatt applied silver clamps experimentally to the renal arteries of dogs and observed a significant and sustained rise in blood pressure. His main interest as a researcher was to find a cause for hypertension, a disease for which effective treatment was not available at the time. There had been a long-standing…
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The Quaker and the Jew, an enduring and impactful friendship: Thomas Hodgkin and Moses Montefiore
Marshall A. LichtmanRochester, New York, United States In 1832, a paper entitled On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen was read to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London by its secretary, as Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) was not yet a member. In it, Hodgkin described the clinical histories and gross postmortem findings of seven…
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A brief history of kidney transplantation
Laura Carreras-PlanellaMarcella FranquesaRicardo LauzuricaFrancesc E. BorràsBarcelona, Spain We may think of renal transplantation as routine therapy today, but this procedure has taken centuries to develop and is marked by important events in the history of science. An ancient description of the kidneys is found in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dated to 1550 BC and discovered…
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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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Richard Bright, the father of nephrology
Two centuries will soon have passed since Richard Bright, of Guy’s Hospital, London, described the disease that came to bear his name. Within a few years of his original publication, the term Bright’s Disease became virtually synonymous with kidney disease—in England, Germany, France, and the United States. In its full-blown formulation it consisted of four…