It was an article in the appropriately named Life magazine in November 1962 that gave hope to Robin Eady, a young medical student with kidney failure. His mother had been in the hairdresser’s when she read about Belding Scribner, a pioneer of long-term kidney dialysis based at the University of Washington in Seattle in the northwest of the US.
The article described a treatment called haemodialysis, a method of cleansing the blood of the toxins and waste products that accumulate when the kidneys cease to function normally. It was the answer to her prayers. By a remarkable coincidence his father’s attention was also drawn to a piece covering the same story in the French magazine Paris Match.
Eady, who was then aged 22, travelled