Sir Robert Christison (1797-1882): a neglected founder of nephrology

Although Robert Christison (1797-1882) of Edinburgh was one of the three main pioneers of modern nephrology along with Bright and Rayer, his name much is less well known than his compatriots, even in his native Scotland. Amongst many contributions to an amazingly wide variety of medical fields in a long and distinguished career, he confirmed and extended Bright's work on the nature and origins of albuminuria and dropsy, showed that these states might be completely reversible, suggested a relationship between acute nephritis, large white and granular kidneys, discovered the basis for understanding uremia whilst applying chemistry to the study of blood and urine in patients with renal disease, described and quantified the anemia of renal failure for the first time, made early microscopical examinations of the kidney and urine, and finally described the syndrome of acute renal failure from intrinsic renal involvement in response to outside noxious stimuli or poisons. Today, it is not easy to discern why he has been so overlooked. Possibily, the fact that he had such an enormous output in other fields, particularly pharmacology and jurisprudence, on which his fame principally rests today, whilst he studied renal diseases for only 25 years of his long career. In addition, only one year after his own book on granular kidney was published, Pierre Rayer brought out his enormous treatise and even though he quoted Christison's results, subsequently tended to be cited even by British physicians. Finally, he left no school of pupils to honour and advertize his achievements to subsequent generations.