Pregnancy, Preeclampsia, and the Endothelial Cell

IN 1941, Soma Weiss, in the foreword to his and Lewis Dexter's book Preeclamptic and Eclamptic Toxemia of Pregnancy , wrote, "Investigations in various branches of the natural sciences, including medicine, have shown that the study of problems which fall on the borderline between diverse specialties has yielded worthwhile results." 1 Weiss and Dexter speculated that preeclampsia was an endothelial-cell disease because of the marked edema of the hands and face. A review 50 years later of the ways in which the endothelial cell might be involved in preeclampsia reaffirms the wisdom of their view that pregnancy, a condition involving problems . . .