John P. Peters and Nephrology.

John Punnett Peters, M.D., (18871955) can be said to have established the solid foundations ofmodem nephrology in an understanding of the chemistry of the body. The rebellious son of an Episcopal minister and noted Egyptologist, he was sent to a military preparatory school (Manlius) as a boy and then to Yale, where he majored in classics and won his varsity letter in diving. To earn money for his tuition at medical school, he taught English and classical languages at Manlius for a year. After graduating from Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons and its residency program in Internal Medicine, he worked first at Cornell Medical College and then at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York with outstanding biochemists of that day, including D.D. Van Slyke, A.B. Hastings, and W.C. Stadie. In 1921, at the age of 34 years, he was recruited to the Yale School of Medicine and soon appointed to the John Slade Ely Professorship in Internal Medicine, where he was to remain a bulwark of the School of Medicine at Yale for the rest of his life (Figure 1). In the early part of the 20th century, physicians were beginning to interpret patients' symptoms in terms of biochemical processes and apply quantitative methods of chemistry and physics to the problems of disease. At the end ofWorld War I, venipuncture was becoming a common procedure, and such chemists as Van Slyke, Folin, Benedict, and Bang were developing practical methods for the analysis of blood. These were rapidly applied by a group of enlightened young clinicians that included James Gamble, Daniel Darrow, Fuller Albright, Allan Butler, and John P. Peters, who quickly established the basis of our present scientific understanding of body fluids. Peters was preeminent in this company, not only because of his mastery of both biochemistry and bedside medicine, but also because of his lucid and prolific writings. An ardent social activist, Peters was the moving spirit behind Principles and