The nuts and bolts of life : Willem Kolff and the invention of the kidney machine

Summary

One of the great medical stories of all time is how one man - defiant, ingenious and stubborn - worked under impossible conditions in a country under the merciless occupation of Nazism, to solve the problem of kidney failure and to change the course of human history. That man was Willem Kolff. Tormented by the unnecessary deaths from kidney failure, he determined to use mechanical ingenuity to purify blood. Working with sausage skins and an improbable collection of parts scavenged from factories under the nose of the German occupying forces, he completed the first kidney machine in 1944. It was a milestone in medical history: it is estimated that as many as half a million people in the world today owe their lives to this single invention. He continued his career with pioneering work on the artificial heart. This book is a celebration of that central story of courage and obsession, and its journey from the old, war-torn world to the new.