Acute and chronic kidney failure, which can lead to death if untreated for several days or weeks, is an illness that is as old as humanity itself. In early Rome and later in the Middle Ages, treatments for uremia (Greek for urine poisoning, or literally, “urine in the blood”) included the use of hot baths, sweating therapies, blood letting and enemas.

Current procedures for the treatment of kidney failure include physical processes such as osmosis and diffusion, which are widespread in nature and assist in the transport of water and dissolved substances.

The first scientific descriptions of these procedures came from the Scottish chemist Thomas Graham, who became known as the “Father of Dialysis”. At first, osmosis and dialysis became popular as methods used in chemical laboratories that allowed the separation of dissolved substances or the removal of water from solutions through semipermeable membranes. Far ahead of his time, Graham indicated in his work the potential uses of these procedures in medicine.

In 1855 the German physiologist Adolf Fick published a quantitative description of the diffusion process. But it was not until 50 years later that someone gave a solid basis for the process – and that someone was Albert Einstein. He derived those empirically defined diffusion laws thermodynamically accurately from the theory of Brownian molecular motion. With that, Einstein established a solid scientific basis. Still, Graham and Fick had discovered the underlying principle which led to the current forms of treatment for kidney failure.



Manuscript of Thomas Graham‘s „Bakerian Lecture“ about osmotic force at the Royal Society in London in 1854. Hand-written note: Glasgow Philosophical Society from the author.


Today, the term “hemodialysis” describes an extracorporeal procedure, or procedure outside the body, for filtering uremic substances from the blood of patients suffering from kidney disease. The actual purifying process, which requires the use of a semipermeable membrane, is based on the above-described works of Graham, Fick and others.