PEDIATRICS Vol. 13 No. 5 May 1954, pp. 393-402
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TOOLS AND METHODS OF DIAGNOSIS AND NEW TRENDS IN THE TREATMENT OF ENDOCRINE DISORDERS

LAWSON WILKINS M.D.1

1 The Endocrine Clinic of The Harriet Lane Home, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Baltimore.

I FEEL very proud but most humble on receiving the honor of the Borden Award. My humility arises from the fact that whatever has been accomplished has been due to the painstaking and hard work of a series of faithful collaborators over a period of 18 years. Drs. Walter Fleischmann, Roger Lewis, Lytt Gardner, Claude Migeon, Alfred Bongiovanni and Walter Eberlein have carried out the laboratory studies, while Drs. Robert Klein, John F. Crigler, Jr., Samuel Silverman, George Clayton, Judson Van Wyk and Melvin Grumbach have directed clinical investigations. Visiting Fellows such as Salvador de Majo, Eugenia Rosemberg and José Cara have contributed materially. I gratefully share the honor with all these colleagues. The check, I shall keep myself.

I shall seize the singular opportunity of the occasion to discuss the newer tools and methods which have made possible the advances of clinical endocrinology, and to point out new therapeutic approaches rather than to give a factual presentation of our own work.

In 1935 when Dr. Park asked me to organize a pediatric endocrine clinic, I hesitated because I felt that at least some clinical endocrinologists were perhaps somewhat overenthusiastic and uncritical, and seemed inclined to let their imaginations run wild. During the previous century great clinical masters had given to the main endocrine disorders classical descriptions which will never be surpassed. One may mention Graves' and Basedow's descriptions of thyrotoxicosis in 1834 and 1840, Addison's of adrenal insufficiency (1854), Gull's of adult myxedema (1873), Osler's of sporadic cretinism (1893), Pierre Marie's of acromegaly (1886) and Froehlich's of the hypothalamic syndrome (1901). It was obvious that less complete forms of these and other endocrine disorders must exist.

Submitted on October 9, 1953