The Pickering school held that blood pressure has a continuous distribution, that multiple genes and multiple environmental factors determine the level of one's blood pressure just as the determination of stature and intelligence is multifactorial, and that 'essential hypertension' is merely the upper end of the distribution (Pickering, 1978). In this view the person with essential hypertension is one who happens to inherit an aggregate of genes determining hypertension (and also is exposed to exogenous factors that favor hypertension). The Platt school took the view that essential hypertension is a simple mendelian dominant trait (Platt, 1963). McDonough et al. (1964) defended the monogenic idea. See McKusick (1960) and Kurtz and Spence (1993) for reviews. Swales (1985) reviewed the Platt-Pickering controversy as an 'episode in recent medical history.' The Pickering point of view appears to be more consistent with the observations.

The syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) is a common cause of hyponatremia. The syndrome manifests as an inability to excrete a free water load, with inappropriately concentrated urine and resultant hyponatremia, hypoosmolality, and natriuresis. SIADH occurs in a setting of normal blood volume, without evidence of renal disease or deficiency of thyroxine or cortisol. Although usually transient, SIADH may be chronic; it is often associated with drug use or a lesion in the central nervous system or lung. When the cardinal features of SIADH were defined by Bartter and Schwartz (1967), levels of AVP could not be measured. Subsequently, radioimmunoassays revealed that SIADH is usually associated with measurably elevated serum levels of AVP. Nephrogenic syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis (NSIAD) is characterized by a clinical picture similar to SIADH, but is associated with undetectable levels of AVP (Feldman et al., 2005).