Seeing a patient die under his hands because there is no adequate
treatment causes an emotion and a frustration in a doctor, which
sometimes stimulates him to try to develop a new type of treatment.
Seeing so many wounded young soldiers die due to renal failure in
World War I incited the German doctor Georg Haas to try to develop
an artificial kidney. He had to give up in despair in 1928. Ten
years later doctor Willem Kolff saw a young man die in his ward in
the University Hospital of Groningen due to renal failure. By that
time two essential factors for an artificial kidney had become
available: a drug to keep the blood from clotting outside of the
body and an efficient dialysing membrane through which waste
substances can pass from the blood into the dialysing fluid. Kolff
succeeded in creating the rotating artificial kidney which he
started using in the town hospital of Kampen in 1943. The rotation
of this artificial kidney started a revolution that made it
possible for thousands of kidney patients all over the world to
keep on living - and sometimes to forget their disease for the time
being. In addition it gave rise to the development of other
artificial organs such as the heart-lung machine, the artificial
heart and the artificial eye. Doctor Jacob van Noordwijk, the
author of this book, was Kolff's first assistant in the treatment
of the first 15 patients. How Kolff succeeded in spite of all the
limitations imposed by the German occupation of the Netherlands and
in spite of the absence of antibiotics and other medical tools
which are common nowadays makes a story which may sound incredible.
Yet it did happen and visitors to the town of Kampen can still see
the hospital building where it all took place.
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