Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Short History of Failing Kidneys (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease)
From time to time, a compelling little book arrives on the medical scene... Peitzman's book will be useful to a wide range of readers, from students in the biomedical sciences to researchers to laypersons.(Choice)Peitzman takes his readers through both the science and the clinical and ethical issues of transplantation. As a nephrologist himself, he know the medicine from the inside, and has great empathy for the patients he has spent his professional career treating. His mix of science and suffering makes for a fine book, always readable and often moving.(W. F. BynumMedical History)This is a general interest book that takes the reader into a highly specified field of discovery and treatment.(Cathy ReesSoutheastern Naturalist)As a physician-historian, Peitzman composes his account of the transformations of kidney disease with an eye to both the present and the past, shifting frequently between his reconstruction of experience and understanding over the centuries with contemporary theory and therapies, often pointing out with a quip the ironies or frustrations of modern health care.(Chris FeudtnerBulletin of the History of Medicine)The foregrounding of the patient is not the only merit of this carefully crafted book. It also shows how other disciplines feed into medicine and medical innovation; medicine is not a scientifically isolated occupation.(Anne HardyJournal of Interdisciplinary History)