The presence of spontaneous pituitary tumors

and lesions following the appearance of adrenal cortical carcinomas presents a new line of evidence for the close relationship of adrenal cortex and pituitary disfunctions in experimental animals and of these disfunctions to tumor formation and their possible inherited tendencies. In man, there are not sufficient data to say conclusively whether the adrenal cortex or anterior pituitary abnormalities are the primary causal agents in the development of various syndromes, such as Cushing's syndrome, (Cushing'sdisease)and adrenal virilism.In fact the clinical evidence of these syndromes is so con fusing that it is difficult to try to ascribe the causal agent to any one endocrine gland and/or its secre tions. Kepler (@) recently has given a critical re view of Cushing's syndrome and its association with Crooke's changes of the basophile cells of the anterior pituitary, i.e. hyalinization of the basophile cells. He made several postulates about the mecha nism that might be involved, to be discussed later, hut did not definitely say that either the anterior pituitary or the adrenal cortex was the primary cause. Hyperadrenocorticism, however, usually plays an essential part in this syndrome. In the experimental animals under discussion in the pres ent report it is definite that the adrenal cortical carcinomas precede the gross pituitary abnormali ties by several months. The material may be useful in helping to elucidate the intimate interplay of pituitary and adrenocortical hormones. A review of the literature indicates that spontaneous hypophyseal abnormalities in mice are extremely rare. Slye found only one abnormality in 1 1,000 mice cx amined (32). Tumors of the mouse hypophysis inter preted as chromophobe adenomas have been produced