Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant

A Short History of Failing Kidneys

Inbunden, Engelska, 2008

409 kr

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Small and bean shaped, the kidneys are sophisticated organs that filter waste from the blood. A number of diseases and disorders-including diabetes and hypertension-can harm the kidneys and cause them to fail. Historian and nephrologist Steven J. Peitzman traces the medical history of kidney disease alongside the personal experience of illness. Drawing on diaries, letters, literary narratives, and scientific writings, Peitzman charts the triumphs of medical innovators like Richard Bright, Thomas Addis, and Belding Scribner as well as the stories of persons, famous and not, who have struggled with the disease. Conditions once known as "Bright's Disease" are now recognized as complex disorders with names such as glomerulopathy and acute tubular necrosis. Treatments have evolved from abdominal tapping and dietetics to hemodialysis and transplantation. Medical advances have improved the well-being and prognosis of persons with failing kidneys. Yet such persons continue on an arduous journey of chronic illness. Peitzman travels with them, from diagnosis to treatment, and witnesses their remarkable ability to cope.Joining the clinician's perspective with the historian's analysis, this fascinating chronicle offers insight into how diseases are defined, categorized, and understood and explains current concepts of how kidney disease behaves and how modern therapy works.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2008-02-25
Mått140 x 222 x 21 mm
Vikt454 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieJohns Hopkins Biographies of Disease
Antal sidor240
FörlagJohns Hopkins University Press
ISBN9780801887345

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Sjukdomar och rubbningar inom Medicin

From time to time, a compelling little book arrives on the medical scene... Peitzman's book will be useful to a wide range of readers, from students in the biomedical sciences to researchers to laypersons. Choice 2008 Peitzman takes his readers through both the science and the clinical and ethical issues of transplantation. As a nephrologist himself, he know the medicine from the inside, and has great empathy for the patients he has spent his professional career treating. His mix of science and suffering makes for a fine book, always readable and often moving. -- W. F. Bynum Medical History 2009 This is a general interest book that takes the reader into a highly specified field of discovery and treatment. -- Cathy Rees Southeastern Naturalist 2008 As a physician-historian, Peitzman composes his account of the transformations of kidney disease with an eye to both the present and the past, shifting frequently between his reconstruction of experience and understanding over the centuries with contemporary theory and therapies, often pointing out with a quip the ironies or frustrations of modern health care. -- Chris Feudtner Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2009 The foregrounding of the patient is not the only merit of this carefully crafted book. It also shows how other disciplines feed into medicine and medical innovation; medicine is not a scientifically isolated occupation. -- Anne Hardy Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2009