How did you come to leave the University of Groningen for a small city like Kampen?
Willem Kolff: I didn’t want to stay at Groningen because the Germans put a National Socialist (Nazi) at the head of the department. I stayed just long enough to get my certificate as an internist, a specialist in internal medicine. The night before this National Socialist appointed by the Germans came in, I left. I never saw him alive. Then I had to look for a place, and I found one in Kampen. It was a very small hospital. They were very nice to me. They wanted to have an internist, and I was the first. I made the royal sum of 10,000 guilders per year in the first year. Divide that by two and a half, and you have the number of dollars that I made. I said, “Now I can afford to make an artificial kidney.” Professor Brinkman at Groningen was the man who first told me about cellophane and dialysis. Brinkman was a wonderful man, and he knew cellophane. Cellophane tubing looks like ribbon, but it’s hollow. It’s artificial sausage skin, and it’s an excellent membrane for dialysis. If you have
