"Where are all these kidney patients coming from? A few perfection the study of the urinary sediment, clinically years ago we had never heard of kidney disease and now practical kidney function tests, and the natural history of a number of kidney diseases including glomerulonephritis. you are speaking of patients in the hundreds of thousands and indeed potentially millions. " My reply, not meant to William Goldring, Herbert Chasis, Dana Atchley, and others studied the effects of hypertension, endocarditis, be grim, was "From the cemetery, Sir. " This is a summary and circulatory diseases on the kidney and spawned suc of some Congressional testimony lance gave on behalf of extending kidney disease under Medicare. Where indeed cessive generations of alert clinical investigators, who be gan to chronicle the natural histories of a wide variety of were all the patients with kidney disease in the United States before World War II? They were certainly not kidney diseases. Quantitative studies of renal function flourished under a school headed by Homer Smith, and under the care of nephrologists! Nephrology was not listed in the questionnaires for any state or the American Medi surprisingly precise techniques were developed for study ing a whole range of explicit nephron functions. Imagine cal Association as a subspecialty or even as a special the joy with the advent of vascular catheterization to be interest.

We are pleased to present to our readers the Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Phosphate and Other Minerals which was held in Strasbourg during June 22-24, 1979. It was hosted by Professor Henri Jahn, Professor of Medicine and Chief, Department of Nephrology at the University of Strasbourg. These Workshops have become a tradition in the scientific scene of mineral metabolism. The meetings have been providing a unique framework for close interaction between scientists from various disciplines, such as nephrologists, endocrinologists, bio chemists, nutritionists, and those dealing with bone metabolism. The Workshops also created a forum for the delivery of original information, as well as state-of-the-art presentations on exciting topics of current interest in this evergrowing field of phosphate and mineral homeostasis. The Fourth International Workshop was attended by three hundred scientists from 15 countries including Austria, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States of America. The topics discussed included those dealing with the renal handling of phos phate, calcium and magnesium, intermediary phosphate metabolism and phosphate homeostasis in health and disease. Two symposia were also presented: one dealt with nephrolithiasis and its rela tion to phosphate and the other with bone metabolism. In addition to 22 presentations by invited speakers, the Workshop provided 46 oral and 93 poster presentations selected from over 250 abstracts submitted to the Organizing Committee."

We are pleased to present to our readers the Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Phosphate and Other Minerals which was held in New York City, New York, U.S.A during September 23-27,1981. It was hosted by Joseph M. Letteri, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York at Stonybrook School of Medicine, and Chief, Division of Nephrology, Nassau County Medical Center. As in the previous Workshops, this meeting provided an oppor tunity for interested scientists from interrelated fields, including nephrology, endocrinology, physiology, biochemistry and nutrition, to get together and discuss the recent advances in the field of phosphate and mineral metabolism. There were 29 invited presenta tions by leading scientists and 40 oral and 90 poster presentations selected from over 250 abstracts submitted to the Organizing Committee. The Workshop was attended by 250 scientists from 14 countries including Austria, Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States of America. The Sixth International Workshop on Phosphate and Other Minerals will be held during June 24-26, 1983 in Verona, Italy. It will be hosted by Professor Giuseppe Maschio, Director, Division of Nephrology, Istituti Ospitalieri, Verona, Italy. The theme of this coming Workshop will continue to focus on the pathophysiology of phosphate homeostasis and the metabolism of other minerals."

We are pleased to present to our readers the proceedings of the Seventh Internat ional Workshop on Phosphate and other Minerals which was held in Marsielle, France during September 1-4, 1985. It was hosted by Professor Michel Olmer, the Chief of the Divison of Nephrology in Hopital de la Conception of the University of D'Aix Marsielle II. The workshop was attended by 250 scientists from 17 countries including Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Democratic Republic of C'.ermany, Egypt, England, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United States of America. There were 28 invited presentations by leading scientists and 40 oral and 75 poster presentations selected from over 200 abstracts submitted to the Organizing Commi ttee. This meet ing provided an excellent opportuni ty for interested scientists from interrelated disciplines including nephrology, endcrinology, physiology, biochemistry and nutrition to get together and discuss recent advances in the field of phosphate and mineral metabolism."

We are pleased to present to our readers the Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Phosphate and Other Minerals which was held in Madrid, during July 15-18, 1977. It was hosted by Dr. Aurelio Rapado, Head of the Metabolic Unit at the Fundacion Jimenez Diaz. The Third International Workshop was organized in the tradition of the previous two Workshops. Scientists from 15 countries attended the meeting which provided a forum for formal presentations and informal discussions of topics of current interest in the field of phosphate metabolism, and that of the homeostasis of other minerals. One day of the Workshop was devoted to the subject of Phosphate Depletion. The latest information on the various aspects of the metabolic consequences of phosphate depletion were brought into focus. In the preface of the Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Phosphate, we indicated that the enthusiasm with which these Workshops were received generated the idea for the creation of a Journal which will publish research endeavors related to mineral and electrolyte metabolism. These efforts were brought into fruition, and the first issue of the new Journal, M). . neJLai. . and E-te. c. ;tJr. o-ty-te. Me. -taboWm has already appeared in November, 1977. It is published by Karger of Basel, Switzerland under the Editorship of Dr. Shaul G. Massry of Los Angeles, with Dr. Louis V. Avioli of St. Louis and Dr. Eberhard Ritz of Heidelberg, serving as Associate Editors.

This volume is the first of a biannual series entitled Contemporary Nephrology. The series intends to provide the reader with a broad, authoritative review of the important developments that have occurred during the previous two years in the major areas of both basic and clinical nephrology. We have been fortunate to enlist a distinguished group of scientists, teachers, and clinicians to serve as members of the Editorial Board of this series. We are grateful to them for the outstand- ing contributions they have made to this first volume of Contemporary Nephrology. This volume has fifteen chapters. The first four chapters deal with more basic aspects of nephrology: Membrane Transport (Schafer); Renal Physiology (Knox and Spielman); Renal Metabolism (School- werth); and Renal Prostaglandins (Dunn). Chapters 5-10 are more pathophysiologically oriented, and each contains an "appropriate mix" of basic and clinical information. This group of chapters includes Acid-Base Physiology and Pathophysiology (Arruda and Kurtzman); Mineral Metabolism in Health and Disease (Agus, Goldfarb, and Was- serstein); Hypertension and the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone Axis (Williams and Hollenberg); Immunologically Mediated Renal Disease (Glassock); Acute Renal Failure and Toxic Nephropathy (Anderson and Gross); and the Kidney in Systemic Disease (Martinez-Maldonado). The last five chapters, which are more clinically oriented, include Uremia (Friedman and Lundin); Nutrition in Renal Disease (Mitch); Dialysis (Maher); Renal Transplantation (Strom); and, finally, Drugs and the Kidney (Bennett).

Volume 4 of Contemporary Nephrology summarizes major advances in 16 different areas of nephrology during the years 1985 and 1986. Major changes in the composition of the Editorial Board and authorship of the different chapters have occurred in this volume. Six distinguished contributors have retired from the Editorial Board. They include Dr. Zalman A. Agus, Philadelphia; Dr. Robert Anderson, Denver; Dr. Eli Friedman, Brooklyn; Dr. Richard Glassock, Torrance, California; Dr. James Schafer, Birmingham, Alabama; and Dr. Gordon Williams, Bos ton. We are grateful to them for their outstanding contributions to the of this series and for their advice and suggestions as first three volumes members of the Editorial Board. They certainly deserve substantial credit for the success of this series. Seven outstanding academicians have joined the Board. They in clude Dr. Vito M. Campese, Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California, who contributed the chapter on "Recent Advances in the Role of the Renal Nervous System and Renin in Hypertension"; Dr. William G. Couser, Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Nephrology at the University of Washington in Seattle ("Immunologic Aspects of Renal Disease"); Dr. Garabed Eknoyan, Professor of Medicine and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine ("The Uremic Syndrome"); Dr. H. David Humes, Associate Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Nephrology Section at the Uni versity of Michigan Medical School, Veterans Administration Medical Center ("Acute Renal Failure and Toxic Nephropathy"); Dr."

When Shaul Massry and Herbert Fleisch asked me to write a foreword for this book, I was honored and eagerly looked forward to reading the many chapters. As they came and I skimmed through them, my mind wandered back to the earliest classic contributions in this field in the late 1920s and early 1930s by Albright and his associates, Greenwald and Gross and Adolph, on the homeostatic regulation of inorganic phosphate and the central role of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in this regulation. They clearly showed the exquisite sensitivity of the renal handling of phosphate to varying dietary and parenteral loads and to changes in the level ofPTH. That two outstanding investigators in the field of divalent ion me tabolism should choose to edit a book solely about the renal handling of inorganic phosphate shows how far we have progressed from these early classics to the recent almost exponential increase in the research and publications related to this subject. Despite this increase, I asked myself, is such a large new monograph, consisting of 13 chapters and 30 distin guished authors, warranted? My reading of these chapters and my learning so much from them convinced me that it is, and my pride was heightened in being asked to write the foreword for this book."

The present book contains the Proceedings of a two day Symposium on Uremic Toxins organized at the University of Ghent in Belgium. A series of guest lectures, free communications and posters have been presented. An international audience of 163 scientists from 16 nationalities listened to and discussed extensively a spectrum of topics brought forward by colleagues and researchers who worked for many years in the field of Uremic Toxins. There is a striking contrast between all the new dialysis strategies available in the work to "clean" the uremic patients and the almost non-progression of our knowledge on uremic toxins in the past decade. In this sense the symposium was felt by all participants as a new start for the research in the biochemical field of the definition of uremia. If the present volume would stimulate new work in this field in order to define uremia, or identify the uremic toxins, the purpose of the organizers would be maximally fulfilled.

Calcium plays an enormous and varied role in living systems now widely appreciated by clinicians.
Calcium in Internal Medicine demonstrates the physiological significance of calcium in clinical medicine and discusses the abnormal calcium metabolism in disorders such as renal failure, hypertension, atherosclerosis and osteoporosis.
Hirotoshi Morii (Editor) linked the clinical use of vitamin D analogues in bone diseases, Yoshiki Nishizawa (Editor) researched the connection between calcium metabolism and atherosclerosis and Shaul G. Massry (Editor) was the first to systematize the importance of excess PTH in chronic renal failure. In addition to these areas, Calcium in Internal Medicine covers basic physiology, pathophysiology, nutritional requirements and the role of calcium in the development and treatment of other various diseases. The importance of calcium and its regulatory systems is brought together in one publication providing a useful reference tool for internists, rheumatologists and endocrinologists.

'Where are all these kidney patients coming from? A Atchley and others studied the effects of hypertension, endocarditis, and circulatory diseases on the kidney and few years ago we never heard of kidney disease and now you are speaking of patients in the hundreds of thou spawned successive generations of alert clinical investi sands and indeed potentially millions'. My reply, not gators who began to chronicle the natural histories of a meant to be grim, was 'From the cemetery, Sir'. This is wide variety of kidney diseases. Quantitative studies of a summary of some Congressional testimony I once renal function flourished under a school headed by Homer Smith, and surprisingly precise techniques were gave on behalf of extending kidney disease under Medi care. Where indeed were all the patients with kidney developed for studying a whole range of explicit nephron disease in the United States before World War II? They functions. Imagine the joy with the advent of catheteri were certainly not under the care of Nephrologists! zation to be able to apply extraction ratios and the Fick Nephrology was not listed in the questionnaires for any principle in a precise way to an organ such as the kidney State or the American Medical Association as a subspe by sampling arterial blood, venous blood and the output of the urine! One had a quantitative handle on the entire cialty or even as a special interest.

Shaul G. Massry Division of Nephrology, The University of Southern California, School of Medicine Los Angeles, California In the last two decades evidence has accumulated indicating that parathyroid hormone may exert a multitude of effects on many cells and a variety of organs beyond its classical targets: the kidney and the bone. These efforts have been spearheaded by nephrologists. The interest of this group of clinicians-scientists stems from the fact that patients with renal failure have secondary hyperparathyroidism and markedly elevated blood levels of PTH (1,2). If this hormone does act on various organs, it becomes plausible that excess blood levels of PTH may be harmful in these patients. Indeed, in an Editorial published in 1977, Massry suggested that the elevated blood levels of PTH in patients with renal failure may exert deleterious effects on many systems and as such may participate in the genesis of many of the manifestations of the uremic syndrome (3). Thus, the essence of the Massry hypothesis is the notion that PTH may act as a major uremic toxin. The search for uremic toxins did not yield successful results. In the last three decades many compounds have been implicated as uremic toxins. However, a cause and effect relationship between these compounds and the manifestations of the uremic syndrome has not been established in most cases.

Recommended in the Brandon/Hill selected list of print books and journals for the small medical library - April 2001 & 2003 Now in one condensed volume, the fully revised Fourth Edition of this comprehensive nephrology text bridges the gap between the fundamental and applied aspects of the discipline. The book covers all areas of nephrology ranging from renal anatomy to dialysis and transplantation in pediatric and adult patients. The book contains fourteen sections with 186 chapters written by over 300 contributors. Chapters are divided into parts with 10-15 annotated readings being provided at the end of each part. This enables the reader to find additional information on specific topics quickly and efficiently. An atlas of renal pathology and an entire section covering laboratory procedures and techniques are also included