More than 50 years after Haas' first human dialysis, and second edition by incorporating chapters on its history 40 years after Kolfrs pioneering work, a book on the and on the practical aspects. present state of the art cannot be written by one person: The size of the book has almost doubled, partly by obviously it had to be a multi-authored volume. There using more illustrations. The inclusion of a number of fore some overlap between chapters and even a few con colour reproductions has been made possible by a sup troversies between authors became unavoidable. porting grant * of the National Kidney Foundation of we deliberately avoided editorial streamlin the Netherlands, which the editors gratefully acknow However ing of manuscripts, leaving the authors' personal style ledge. We considered asking several authors to shorten their and personal opinions unaltered as much as possible. We resisted this as it would have delayed the This may make the book more vivid to read and may chapters. sometimes stimulate readers to study a subject in greater publishing date and would possibly have removed much detail from the literature. Additionally, both British and material besides being a painful task for our collea American spellings have been kept because of the inter gues."

BELDING H. SCRIBNER The year was 1942 and Will em Kolff was hard at 60's, we encountered exactly the same kind of work perfecting the device that would not only resistance to the concept of chronic dialysis. But revolutionize the treatment of renal failure, but as has happened over and over again in all of more importantly point the way to the develop science, the heresy of one decade becomes the ment of the entire field of extracorporeal devices practice of the next - a phenomenon that the in general and cardiac bypass devices in particular. young heretics among the third generation readers The enormity of the impact that Kolffs con of this volume should not forget. tribution was to have on medicine was revealed And so, today Drukker, Parsons and Maher retrospectively to me when I recalled that in that have successfully undertaken the very difficult same year, 1942, I was a second year medical task of bringing together in one volume all the student at Stanford University, taking among diverse elements of dialysis therapy. The size of other things, P. J. Hanzlik's required course in the volume reflects not only the magnitude ofthe pharmacology. I have two memories of that interdisciplinary effort that brought about the course. One was the requirement that we students technical and clinical advances, but also the learn to recognize 64 old time drugs by appear many clinical and other ramifications of dialysis ance, smell and taste. For better or worse, almost therapy."