Experimental renal hypertension; mechanism of production and maintenance.

IFEEL highly honored to be the first speaker on this occasion, and I am particularly delighted that there is congregated here such a large and representative group of investigators who have been working actively in the field of hypertension for so many years. Since this is the introduction to this Conference, I shall start right out by reciting my credo, which is that so-called essential hypertension is of renal origin. Note that this statement does not include a commitment as to the mechanism whereby the kidneys effect the elevation of blood pressure. In fact, I wish to emphasize that the original experiment in the artificial production of renal hypertension was designed primarily to test only whether elevated blood pressure would result from a disturbance of intrarenal hemodynamics similar to that which probably exists in the diseased kidneys usually found at autopsy in patients with essential hypertension. Essential human hypertension, as it usually is defined, signifies elevated diastolic and systolic blood pressure of unknown origin and unassociated with obvious or significant disturbance of renal excretory function. This does not mean that there is no functional