Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Short History of Failing Kidneys (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) [Hardcover]

Steven J. Peitzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0801887348 | ISBN-13: 978-0801887345 | Edition: 1

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.

(2008)

Editorial Reviews

Review

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 2009)

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 )

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 )

About the Author

Steven J. Peitzman is a professor of medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine and a senior medical advisor at the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.

(2009)

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (November 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801887348
• ISBN-13: 978-0801887345
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #496,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully interesting and informative book, March 21, 2008

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Short History of Failing Kidneys (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) (Hardcover)

I enjoy reading books on diseases, and have read several - on such subjects as smallpox, polio, bubonic plague, and others. Well, this book is slightly different, in that instead of focusing on a specific disease, it looks at diseases of the kidneys. As a genealogist, I have often read seen family histories that mention "dropsy" and death certificates that mention "Bright's Disease." But, what does that mean for the person so diagnosed?

Well, this book does a great job of explaining what it meant to have dropsy, or be diagnosed with Bright's Disease, and following the history through to the present, it discusses the origins and dialysis and kidney transplantation, and what they all meant. I found that the book did a wonderful job of really bringing home to me just what it meant to have kidney problems over the years, and how doctors and patients looked at themselves and their relationship.

I found this to be a wonderfully interesting and informative book. If you are interested in the history of medicine, then you really should read this book. If you are a genealogist or family historian, and want to understand what your ancestors faced years ago, then you really must get this book. I highly recommend it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The organ that gets no respect... until it is needed, February 12, 2008

By 

R Schmidt (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Short History of Failing Kidneys (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) (Hardcover)

This is the second book in the new series, Johns Hopkins Biographies of Diseases. The first, on malaria, is on my reading list. This one, Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Short History of Failing Kidneys, encourages me to read all the books in this series as they appear.

Physician Steven Peitzman takes the reader on a trip through the practical and technological stages of understanding and treating renal (kidney) disease, later to become kidney (renal) disease. From the diagnosis and treatment of "dropsy" (the illustration of a woman being treated for dropsy on page 5 is indicative of the suffering this condition involved), to the fumbling understanding of the role of the kidney in "Bright's Disease," to a clearer recognition of the structure and functions of healthy and diseased kidney tissue, Peitzman takes the reader on a journey though medical history. And it is a significant history, covering many firsts: diagnosis of organ-specific diseases, artificial organs, and transplantation.

I was particularly engaged with the sections on dialysis and transplantation. Dialysis was, and is, a profound invention. Humans became tied to machine, and an industry developed around this relationship. Today, a third of a million Americans visit dialysis centers or are home-treated three days a week and, for most of them, this will continue for the rest of their lives. Peitzman discusses the ultimate goal for these patients or clients: reintegration into work and family life. In many cases, this has been successful. However, the average age of dialysis patients is increasing, and for these dialysis clients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) at age 75, survival, not work, is the ultimate goal. Peitzman hints at the ethical concerns of investing huge sums of public monies for keeping very ill dialysis clients alive for a few months.

Transplantation is the most recent miracle. Peitzman writes, "...some recipients of a kidney transplant can see in the returning trickle of urine the very presence of a loving God" (p. 159). For those with ESRD, it must seem like a miracle. There are troubling issues with the increasing number of people donating kidneys to family members and friends (understandable), and total strangers (less understandable). Given the extraordinary increase in type 2 diabetes and obesity, primary reasons affecting the deterioration of kidneys, it seems people should hold on to their kidneys a little tighter. Time will tell whether these donors have made an appropriate choice.

The last chapter on prevention is also of great interest, with Peitzman suggesting that 10 million undiagnosed Americans could benefit from treatment to prevent future kidney disease.

All in all, this is an excellent summary of the history of kidney disease and treatment.