PATHOGENESIS OF ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION

Much is known of the pathogenesis of spontaneous hypertension in human beings and experimental hypertension in animals, despite the short time during which modern investigative methods have been used. Because the various types of experimental renal hypertension have received the greatest share of study is insufficient reason for one's assuming that they necessarily mirror more exactly essential hypertension in human beings. Several years ago, some clinicians overstepped judicious bounds in proclaiming that the cause of human hypertension had been reproduced in animals, a view wisely not expressed at that time by the inspirer of some of this work, Harry Goldblatt. But there are certainly enough similarities between experimental renal hypertension and essential hypertension to justify the hope that elucidation of the mechanism of the former will aid in the understanding of the latter.

For some years, the view was held that hypertension was due to humoral agents. A poor case