Seeing a patient die under his hands because there is no adequate treatment causes an emotion and a frustration in a doctor, which sometimes stimulates him to try to develop a new type of treatment. Seeing so many wounded young soldiers die due to renal failure in World War I incited the German doctor Georg Haas to try to develop an artificial kidney. He had to give up in despair in 1928.
Ten years later doctor Willem Kolff saw a young man die in his ward in the University Hospital of Groningen due to renal failure. By that time two essential factors for an artificial kidney had become...