“What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infininite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?”
Isak Dineson, Danish author (1885-1962)
I first heard this quotation from my mentor Adrian Katz. Only Adrian would compare the wine you were currently drinking to urine.
If you read the first paragraph of the Renal chapter of Robbin's Pathologic Basis of Disease… they slip this in as a nice introduction to the glorious device known as the kidney. 🙂
http://www.mdconsult.com/books/page.do?eid=4-u1.0-B978-1-4377-0792-2..50025-0&isbn=978-1-4377-0792-2&type=bookPage&from=content&uniqId=268765812-2
Awesome. I didn't know that. I used this quote when I gave a drug company lecture at a local restaurant called…Shiraz.
My patients get a crack whenever I say… and so floweth the golden elixir of life … (very appropriate in someone with postobstructive diuresis) –