'Where are all these kidney patients coming from? A Atchley and others studied the effects of hypertension, endocarditis, and circulatory diseases on the kidney and few years ago we never heard of kidney disease and now you are speaking of patients in the hundreds of thou­ spawned successive generations of alert clinical investi­ sands and indeed potentially millions'. My reply, not gators who began to chronicle the natural histories of a meant to be grim, was 'From the cemetery, Sir'. This is wide variety of kidney diseases. Quantitative studies of a summary of some Congressional testimony I once renal function flourished under a school headed by Homer Smith, and surprisingly precise techniques were gave on behalf of extending kidney disease under Medi­ care. Where indeed were all the patients with kidney developed for studying a whole range of explicit nephron disease in the United States before World War II? They functions. Imagine the joy with the advent of catheteri­ were certainly not under the care of Nephrologists! zation to be able to apply extraction ratios and the Fick Nephrology was not listed in the questionnaires for any principle in a precise way to an organ such as the kidney State or the American Medical Association as a subspe­ by sampling arterial blood, venous blood and the output of the urine! One had a quantitative handle on the entire cialty or even as a special interest.