β Scribed by Fenton Schaffner
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The large number of cases of hepatitis seen in World War II, the development of needle biopsy of the liver, and the introduction of new biochemical tests to assess the status of the liver led to increasing interest in liver structure and function following the war. The American Society for Experimental Pathology began to devote one of its sessions to the organ in the late 1940s. In addition, the American Gastroenterological Society meetings also brought together medical scientists and clinicians who had similar interests. Meetings were held to exclusively discuss the liver. These resulted in the formation of our present society. As one of the few remaining who attended those early conferences and then participated continuously in the activities of AASLD, I felt that a recounting of the early history might be of some interest as we appraoch the Association' s fiftieth anniversary in 2000.
The library of the Hektoen Institute for Medical Research of the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, IL, was the scene for an informal conference on topics related to the liver in the autumn of 1948. The participants were, for the most part, attendees of the annual meeting of the Central Society for Clinical Research which was held each Fall in Chicago' s Drake Hotel. Each of us working with Hans Popper at Hektoen was asked to briefly describe our research while visitors described their own activities. Unfortunately, no records were kept of that meeting, and so the names of the 30 participants and visitors as well as of our discussions are not available.
During the summer of 1949, Hans proposed to participants of the previous year' s meeting as well as to others, mainly in the Midwest, that a more structured, but still informal, meeting be held at Hektoen the afternoon and evening before the Central Society meeting. The response was enthusiastic and many volunteered to present updates on their work concerning the liver. Hans' chief collaborators in this venture were Fred Hoffbauer from Minneapolis and Leon Schiff from Cincinnati.
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## Abstract The author began his medical career at the University of Mississippi Medical School in Jackson where, in 1966, he established the state's first dialysis unit. Here, he recounts the early days of hemodialysis and home hemodialysis at his facility.
In an alternate history of the aftermath of World War II, Japan has been cleaved in half, with the southβHonshu and the other islandsβallied with the United States and the northern island Hokkaido annexed by the enigmatic Union. It was on Hokkaido that a mysterious tower had been built, a strand of