Customer Reviews

The Nuts and Bolts of Life: William Kolff and the Invention of the Kidney Machine

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In THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF LIFE Paul Heiney introduces us to a lively 90-something gentleman gleefully showing off something he invented -- a folding wooden bench. When Paul also learns that this spry fellow was the inventor of the first successful kidney dialysis machine back in the days before the (...)occupation of Holland, as well as a member of the American team which created the first artificial heart, he is moved to write the biography of Willem "Pim" Kolff.

Nowadays, kidney dialysis machines are so much a part of the medical profession, it is difficult to grasp what life had been like before their invention for people with kidney failure -- a sentence of a horrible, complicated death. As Paul Heiney writes in his Introduction about his first visit to the Kidney Unit in a British hospital: "Like the organs themselves, which lurk around the back of the body, inconspicuously keeping us alive, kidney units are often at the rear of hospitals, taken for granted and expected to get on with their routine task, basking in little glory." (Page 2)

RebeccasReads highly recommends THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF LIFE as a conversational biography, well-researched, rich in scientific details & the dramatic life & times of this venerable inventor.

Everyone can name people who took millions of lives, but few of us know the story of a man who has saved millions of lives. This is a great look at a man who was truly heroic.