High blood pressure becomes treatable

The first unequivocally useful drug, 1964 Robust and practical sphygmomanometers (mercury and aneroid) became available in the early 1900s...

The invention of diuretics

Dropsy becomes treatable in the 1960s Failure of pharmacological therapies in a woman with heart failure in 1964, right on the verge ...

Dropsy, nephrosis, nephrotic syndrome

The first effective treatment for a kidney disease, 1950. Dropsy is an ancient word (first recorded about 1290 AD) meaning oedema. Genera...

Historyofnephrology in Nephmadness

Not sure we understand this, but we're in it. #NephMadness  Click to participate ; watch 1 min explanation video 4 History conten...

Hepatitis B - epidemics to vaccination

Tragedy to biotech, 1965-76 Hepatitis B virion model.  medicalgraphics.de The first cases of dialysis-associated hepatitis were report...

Insipid diabetes

A disease of 1769 becomes a treatment in 2015 The Edinburgh physician William Cullen described the difference between ‘sweet’ diabetes (mell...

Renal biopsy becomes mainstream, 1954

Detail at last Ambrose Tardieu for Pierre Rayer (1840) (Wellcome Images V0009820ER) For most of the first 100 years of modern nephrology, ap...

Bright's disease 100y after Bright

The last decade of purely clinical observation Acute glomerulonephritis with crescent formation - Volhard and Fahr 1914 (one of the last ren...

The glomerulus is a filter

Physiologists resolve an anatomical impasse, 1924 Illustrations of Malpighian bodies, from Bowman 1842, Philosophical Transactions 132: 57-...

Acute nephritis in 1875

50 years after Bright Richard Bright’s 1827 report created the discipline of nephrology and triggered an exciting period of clinical resear...

Richard Bright and the discovery of kidney disease

Nephrology is born, 1827 Fig 1 from Bright 1827.  (Wellcome Images) Richard Bright (1789-1858), is widely regarded as the founder of the spe...

The doctor's bag circa 1910

This doctor’s bag is in the London Science Museum. Though dated 1890-1930 much of its contents look very early 20th century. What it doesn’t...

Marathon nephritis and postural proteinuria

When urinary abnormalities don’t indicate renal disease From Tom Brown at Oxford  (1861) illust Sydney P Hall (1903 edition) Richard Bright’...

Lead nephropathy

The oldest interstitial renal disease? Lead pipe in Roman Bath.  (Wikimedia Commons, see foot) Severe abdominal colic and gout caused by lea...