Pregnancy, Preeclampsia, and the Endothelial Cell

IN 1941, Soma Weiss, in the foreword to his and Lewis Dexter's book Preeclamptic and Eclamptic Toxemia of Pregnancy, wrote, "Investigations in various branches of the natural sciences, including medicine, have shown that the study of problems which fall on the borderline between diverse specialties has yielded worthwhile results."1 Weiss and Dexter speculated that preeclampsia was an endothelial-cell disease because of the marked edema of the hands and face. A review 50 years later of the ways in which the endothelial cell might be involved in preeclampsia reaffirms the wisdom of their view that pregnancy, a condition involving problems . . .