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Rufus of Ephesus and His ‘Diseases of the Kidneys’

The first book on diseases of the kidneys, titled ‘Diseases of the Kidneys and Bladder’, was written by Ruphus of Ephesus at the close of the 1st century AD. Little is known of Rufus, who seems to have attained fame and was considered an equal of Hippocrates and Galen. He was highly respected and extensively quoted by authors of Byzantine, Arabic and Middle Ages medicine. In his description of diseases of the kidneys he makes a concerted effort to correlate structure and function, and to provide a rational explanation of the altered function of the kidneys in disease. The section of his monograph ‘On Hardening of the Kidneys’ is brief, but constitutes the first description of morbid and clinical features of the end-stage kidneys. Like many of his contemporaries, Rufus wrote several monographs on selected topics and organs. That he chose diseases of the kidneys as the subject of one of his monographs makes him especially pertinent to the history of nephrology.