An early example of the first generation of fully successful kidney machines.

This machine was the first of its type in Britain when imported from France in 1955 to the Hammersmith Hospital. It follows the design of Willem Kolff who had performed the first successful human dialysis in Holland in 1943. He believed that the reliability of this generation of machines established dialysis as an effective form of treatment.

Société Usifroid, a company more usually engaged in making freeze-drying equipment, manufactured this machine for the Necker Hospital, the specialist centre for kidney diseases in Paris. Like all dialysers, it removed blood impurities by osmosis, mimicking the action of the kidneys. Blood ran through cellophane tubing wound around the central drum which rotated in a temperature-controlled bath containing 100 litres of dialysing fluid. These early machines were few and only used for patients with acute kidney failure caused, for example, by poisoning.

Inv: 1970-151