In this post…

• What are the aims of this blog?
  
• Where does the name come from?

Why write a blog?

I enjoy learning about renal physiology - in particular those aspects that are relevant to clinical disorders of fluid-electrolyte balance. However I have a bad habit of reading up on a topic, understanding it for 10 minutes, and promptly forgetting it again. I thought that starting a blog might help me to retain information in the longer term. I suspect that this blog will be read by an audience of one, which is fine with me!

Aims of this blog

I intend to use this blog to highlight those facets of renal physiology that are most relevant to clinical medicine. When a clinical case prompts me to read up on something, I will make a short post. (For example, I might review the mechanism of PPI-induced hypomagnesaemia or ask how thiazide diuretics work in diabetes insipius.) I will also write about recent papers and re-vist the “classic” experiments of the early-mid 20th century that allowed us to understand the basic mechanisms of kidney physiology.

Name of this blog

My interest in renal physiology was - in part - inspired by the “father of renal Physiology”, Homer Smith and by the scientists who followed in his footsteps.

Homer Smith

As a scientist and writer, he laid the foundations for modern renal physiology. He was among the first to describe basic renal processes in robust, quantitative terms. He wrote about how our kidneys have evolved over the past 4 billion years, most famously in his classic book, From Fish To Philosopher. Calling this blog From Fish To Physician is a nod to this inspiration. My title takes the evolutionary journey described by Smith one step further than he did. We have evolved to a state where we are able not only to think in general terms but to one in which we understand - by and large - the cellular and molecular basis of electrolyte disorders and kidney diseases.