Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone

THAT both neural and hormonal changes play a part in the adaptive responses of complex organisms to physical or psychological challenges has been appreciated for well over a century. In 1948, Harris1 proposed that the hypothalamus served as the key link between the nervous and endocrine systems in reacting to the environment, and suggested that hypothalamic influences on the anterior pituitary were humorally transmitted. The first convincing reports of the existence of such a humoral substance followed soon thereafter, with the demonstrations in 1955 by Saffran et al.,2 using neurohypophysial extracts, and by Guillemin and Rosenberg,3 employing hypothalamic preparations, of . . .