[When the history of nephrology changed that of medicine].

Medicine owes much to nephrology. Indeed many of the practical and doctrinal acquisitions, through nephrology have derived their first intuitions, explanations and applications which have become epochal conquests of scientific progress. This article is a historical reconstruction of six of the milestones which have marked the medical and scientific human progress: Galeno, the ligature of the ureters and the birth of experimental medicine; uroscopy and the introduction of laboratory exams; the synthesis of urea in the laboratory and the beginnings of biothecnology; the kidney and the introduction of systematic parenteral antibiotic therapy; the kidney and the first artificial organs; the kidney and the start of the transplantation era.