Antihypertensive Functions of the Kidney

I AM grateful to the Council for High Blood Pressure Research and to its Program Committee for the invitation to deliver the Third Arthur C. Corcoran Memorial Lecture. I have felt this responsibility keenly since Dr. Bumpus first approached me: first, because, after 16 years as a member of this body, I am well aware of the critical nature of my peers on the Council; and second, because of the immensity of the topic I propose to consider with you — the antihypertensive functions of the kidney — a subject analyzed in depth by many of you here today. Before beginning, I wish to pay my respects to Dr. Corcoran. It was my pleasure to know him while he was in Cleveland, and especially during his short stay in Ann Arbor — "Core," we called him. His dedication to the advancement of knowledge in the field of hypertension will remain an example for all of us to follow. Among my vignettes of Core, I am especially fond of one. As a budding "renoprivinologist," I was on a program of the research section of the American Medical Association in the early 1950s with Corcoran and others. I delivered a talk on the vascular lesions of renoprival hypertension of the dog. The paper, which appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine, could be considered respectable, but the talk needed much improvement. Core discussed the talk with praise. He was, indeed, a considerate human being as well as a fine scientist. The concept of an antihypertensive function of the kidney may be considered, in modern terms, as originating with the Goldblatt experiment, that is, in 1934.* Fortunately, Goldblatt's experimental animal was the dog. In the dog, as he and his associates