Review of literature on kidneys, 1950s

Taken from accompanying cover note: "Note on Oliver Wrong's handwritten brown clip file: This small, 147-page clip file doesn't carry a date. But given the addresses listed in the two fly leaves, the references to Dr Alexander Leaf, M.G.H (Massachusetts General Hospital) and Manchester, and the dates of the various scientific papers reviewed, it was probably written in the early 1950s, when Dr Oliver Wrong was in his mid-twenties. During this period he worked as an unpaid research fellow under Leaf, an inspirational young salt and water investigator in Boston, living on Revere St, and later reluctantly took a job offered to him by Professor Robert Platt as university tutor in the Department of Medicine in Manchester, living in Lister House, the student hostel. This period of his life is covered in some detail in his 59-page autobiography. This appears to be the earliest written evidence of Wrong's interest in the kidney. Rather than original research, it is a critical review of the scientific literature on the kidneys that existed at the time and was probably a self-teaching exercise. Wrong was laying the intellectual groundwork for his understanding of the human kidney and trying to get up to speed for future work with Dr Leaf, with whom he went on to co-author three papers in 1953/4: (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC438416/pdf/jcinvest00610-0076.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13192190 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13207412) These later papers addressed fundamental issues such as: how does the kidney regulate the volume of body fluids? How is the concentration of salt in the blood regulated by the kidney? The file includes an interesting commentary on very early types of artificial kidney. Curiously, in the light of Wrong's later work, there is little on acid-base regulation by the kidney, an interest that clearly came later on in his career. The fact that this booklet surfaced in Wrong's personal papers, rather than his scientific files, suggests it may have had special sentimental value to him, marking the start of what was to become a life-long scientific quest. This period also marked the start of a long relationship with Dr Alex Leaf, who became both a mentor and a close personal friend. Dr Anthony Norden/Michela Wrong April 2017"

c. 1954

1 volume