KfH-Dialysemuseum Fürth

Description

In the Jakob-Henle-Haus near the Klinikum Fürth, the KfH Dialysis Museum Fürth presents the historical development of blood purification from antiquity to the present.

The museum was founded in 1990 on an initiative of the Fürth KfH Dialysis Center; physicians and nursing staff, together with the Kuratorium für Dialyse und Nierentransplantation (KfH), were involved in its establishment.

The exhibition begins with a reproduction of a urine inspection glass from 1550 and proceeds to Thomas Graham, who in 1854, after membrane experiments, coined the term "dialysis." Reconstructions of historical dialysis apparatus are displayed: the first artificial kidney used for dialysis in animal experiments in 1913 (J. J. Abel, L. G. Rountree, B. B. Turner), the artificial kidney by Georg Haas, first applied to a human in Gießen in 1924, and the rotating drum kidney with which the first successful human dialysis was achieved in 1945 (Willem Kolff). A vertical drum kidney by Nils Alwall complements these reconstructions.

The museum’s original holdings include numerous historical devices and designs: among them a Beck’sche Blutmühle (after Ernst Pohl), the Moeller kidney (Type III, 1955), a Travenol tank kidney (1960), an RSP with Travenol blood pump and Avon coil dialyzer (1968), the Stuttgart kidney (manufacturer: Fresenius, 1970), a Kofferniere by Union Carbide Cooperation (1975), as well as dialysis machines from the former GDR and flat-plate dialyzers by Frederik Kiil.

The collection is complemented by additional dialysis equipment, dialysis catheters and exhibits on the development of dialysis shunts, illustrating the technical and medical advances in renal replacement therapy.