"Where are all these kidney patients coming from? A few perfection the study of the urinary sediment, clinically years ago we had never heard of kidney disease and now practical kidney function tests, and the natural history of a number of kidney diseases including glomerulonephritis. you are speaking of patients in the hundreds of thousands and indeed potentially millions. " My reply, not meant to William Goldring, Herbert Chasis, Dana Atchley, and others studied the effects of hypertension, endocarditis, be grim, was "From the cemetery, Sir. " This is a summary and circulatory diseases on the kidney and spawned suc­ of some Congressional testimony lance gave on behalf of extending kidney disease under Medicare. Where indeed cessive generations of alert clinical investigators, who be­ gan to chronicle the natural histories of a wide variety of were all the patients with kidney disease in the United States before World War II? They were certainly not kidney diseases. Quantitative studies of renal function flourished under a school headed by Homer Smith, and under the care of nephrologists! Nephrology was not listed in the questionnaires for any state or the American Medi­ surprisingly precise techniques were developed for study­ ing a whole range of explicit nephron functions. Imagine cal Association as a subspecialty or even as a special the joy with the advent of vascular catheterization to be interest.