Willem Kolff: Machinery, not Weaponry Upper Sixth student, Viren Thandi wrote a short article for the Oxford science writing competition. Although he was not selected as a winner, his article is very interesting to read.
Willem Kolff lived in wartime Germany but did not experience bloodshed from the front line; instead, he came into contact with it through a machine. This machine would be developed in the future to save many lives - millions, in fact - yet during the early days of the invention, it received little praise The early dialysis machine must have seemed no more extraordinary than a whirring barrel in a laundry tub. Kolff’s discoveries are often overlooked by more ‘revolutionary’ developments in medicine, such as mass-producing the first antibiotic; for a nephrologist, however, to suggest that Kolff’s invention was not vitally important would be akin to dismissing the invention of the pacemaker in cardiology. Therefore, this begs the question: how did such a brilliant, impactful invention come to be?
‘This machine would be known in the future to save many lives – millions in fact.’ Like many brilliant inventions, Kolff’s invention was the result of an observation made in 1938, and quite an unfortunate one at that. Whilst in his prime as a young student physician, studying at university, Dr. Kolff observed the suffering and ultimate death of a young man. The cause of death was temporary renal failure. This was undoubtedly a moment of great insight in Dr. Kolff’s life, as he was about to theorize an idea which would permanently change nephrology; by providing the build-up of waste products within the bloodstream following renal failure, he would be able to provide the patient with extra precious time in the absence of kidney functionality. This would allow the tissues within the kidney to regenerate sufficiently. Evidently, Dr. Kolff could not wait to perform post-doctoral research; he immediately began work on his designs for an
