 In modern times , early reports from the 1908 Messina earthquake and World War I on kidney failure after injury were followed by studies by London physicians Eric <unk> and Desmond Beall , working at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and the National Institute for Medical Research , on four victims of The Blitz in 1941 . Myoglobin was demonstrated in the urine of victims by spectroscopy , and it was noted that the kidneys of victims resembled those of patients who had hemoglobinuria ( hemoglobin rather than myoglobin being the cause of the kidney damage ) . In 1944 <unk> demonstrated experimentally that the kidney failure was mainly caused by myoglobin . Already during the war , teams of doctors traveled to bombed areas to provide medical support , chiefly with intravenous fluids , as dialysis was not yet available . The prognosis of acute kidney failure improved markedly when dialysis was added to supportive treatment , which first happened during the 1950 – 1953 Korean War . 
