First dialysis patient

Willem Kolff, creator of the first kidney dialysis machine, was born on February 14, 1911 in Leyden, Holland. He became interested in medicine as a child, spending a great deal of time learning from his father, Jacob Kolff, who was the director of the Tuberculosis Sanatorium at Beekbergen. Kolff graduated from the Leyden Medical School in 1938, and in 1941, he received a PhD and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Groeningen.

As a medical student, Kolff had witnessed a 22-year-old man’s death due to kidney failure. He immediately devoted himself to research. In 1941, he developed an artificial kidney machine in Kampen, Germany. He had obtained coarse materials from a local factory, fashioning a machine out of cellophane tubing wrapped around a cylinder, which would rest in a bath of cleansing fluid. The patient’s blood, which was toxic because of the kidney failure, would be drawn into the tubing, into the bath, and cleaned, then passed back into the patient’s body. In 1945, the device saved the life of its first patient, a 67-year-old woman. She li

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