Observations Upon the Occurrence of an Antidiuretic Substance in the Urine of Patients With Pre-Eclampsia and Eclampsia

IT is SOME twenty years since Hofbauer (1, 2) first postulated a ’pituitary adrenal’ mechanism as the cause of eclampsia. The proposal was attrac, tive, although it was not supported at the time by direct experimental evidence. Many of the changes in pathological physiology which are charac, teristic of eclampsia, particularly water retention, oliguria and convulsions, are simulated by experimental pituitrin intoxication. However, crucial evidence that would incriminate the posterior pituitary in the etiology of eclampsia would depend upon the demonstration of pituitrin in the tissues or body fluids either in abnormal amounts or under conditions in which it is not otherwise found. In 1931, Anselmino and Hoffman (3) reported that they had obtained a pituitrin, like substance in ultrafiltrates from the acidulated plasma of eclamptic patients. The identification of this supposed substance with pituitrin was based principally upon the observation that the ultrafiltrates caused inhibition of water diuresis in rabbits.