Following in the footsteps of Billard and Ballantyne, Edith Potter founded from the 1930s onwards the modern subspecialty of perinatal pathology. Her name is eponymously linked with the facial characteristics of infants with bilateral renal agenesis.

The development of dialysis was a dramatic step forward in medicine, allowing people who would soon have died because of lack of kidney function to remain alive for years. We have since found, however, that the "artificial kidney" does not live up fully to its name. Dialysis keeps patients alive but not well. Part of the residual illness that dialysis patients experience is caused by retained w...