"Will be invaluable for cleansing impure blood"

Back in the day: "All the Blood In the Body Can Be Pumped Out and Cleaned of Disease Germs," The Day Book. (Chicago, Ill.), February 05, 1914, NOON EDITION, Image 12; Image provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL; digital image, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-05/ed-1/seq-12/>

"Kidney Dialysis. What is this the stone age?"

Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy (Star Trek)

Yes, we are in the stone age.  I hate dialysis.
I'm not alone.  There is a very active message board called "I Hate Dialysis."

Still, I appreciate living in a time and place where I can get dialysis.  I also appreciate the people who continue to work on the problem of kidney failure.

Dialysis is a very recent development::

"..in 1945, a 67-year-old comatose woman regained consciousness following 11 hours of hemodialysis with the dialyzer and lived for another seven years before dying from an unrelated condition. She was the first-ever patient successfully treated with dialysis."

Before I began peritoneal dialysis in 2014 I posted about a patient surviving on peritoneal dialysis 54 days after complete kidney failure.  I've survived on it for over 3 years so they have obviously made dramatic improvements on the procedure.

There is a dialysis museum in Seattle!

Every day we get closer to solving the kidney failure problem.  Screenshot from today of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

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