History of Nephrology 4: Reports from the 3rd Congress of the International Association for the History of Nephrology, Taormina, November 2001 ... Journal of Nephrology 2002, 2-3) (v. 1-4)

Reconstructing the history of nephrology is not an easy task. It requires a great deal of effort and interest on the part of the researcher, who has to explore information on diseases of the kidney in various medical texts of the past, where it has sometimes been buried for centuries. This volume of "History of Nephrology" thus concentrates on the history of diseases of the kidney. Physicians have toiled in diagnosing and treating ailments of the kidney for millennia, well before the emergence of the specialty of nephrology. It is also evident that many of the best minds in medicine, when faced with the complex signs and symptoms we now classify as diseases of the kidney, were initially puzzled by them and then satisfied by merely describing them.