Expert physicians from many European and Latin American countries are engaged in a systematic effort to persuade influential colleagues and government officials to recognize senology as a well-defined scientific discipline and establish it as an independent specialty. The task is complex, as the establishment of a new specialty always is. Senology is not a superfluous specialty; it is similar in characteristics and indications to many other single organ-targeted specialties such as cardiology, hematology, nephrology, neurology, and others. The quest for its recognition may be a long effort that will require vigor, intelligence, firmness, persistence, and the establishment of a dialogue between interested physicians and government representatives, leaving personal interests aside. To take the care of patients with breast diseases to its optimal stage, it will be imperative to create specialized breast centers governed by principles of unity of place and action. Gathering under the same roof all specialists skilled and interested in the diagnosis and management of benign and malignant diseases of the breast and all the diagnostic and therapeutic equipment to deliver care to these patients will bring us much closer to our goal.

The mechanism inducing milk secretion in 10 puerperal women and in their children (Witch's milk) was studied by means of sequential hormone measurements starting at delivery and continued during the first postpartum week. Determinations included prolactin (PRL), growth hormone (GH), estradiol 17beta (E217beta), and progesterone (PG). Hormonal levels in the newborns closely paralleled those of the mothers. In both groups, the onset of milk secretion coincided with the disappearance of sex steroids from plasma in the presence of elevated PRL concentrations. Response to TRH (8 microng/kg) revealed adequate PRL reserve, and failure of this peptide to modify basal GH in the neonates was suggestive of appropriate hypothalamic control. The role of estrogens in the induction of pituitary hyperplasia during pregnancy is discussed.

A breast aspiration technic for non-palpable radiological abnormalies, as used in the Senology Department of Professor CH. GROS. Strasbourg, is presented and illustrated by an example.

245 cases of premature birth were compared from the point of view of frequency of aetiologically significant factors with 200 cases of normal birth. The perinatal progress of these premature and normal births was also followed up. It was possible to obtain statistical confirmation of the connection between prematurity and frequent occurrence of some of these parameters. Prominent amongst these are previous abortions and premature births, cervical insufficiency and malformation of the uterus, multiple pregnancies and anomalous foetal position, also placental insufficiency. Increased mortality and morbidity--including perinatal complications--were recorded at the same time. Knowledge of predisposing factors will in many cases make it possible to recognize in good time when pregnancies may be at risk and give adequate supervision and treatment where appropriate.

In the autopsy material of the Departments of Pathology in Zürich and Winterthur the frequency of cases with unilateral or bilateral pheochromocytoma and combinations of pheochromocytoma with additional medullary thyroid carcinoma with amyloid has been studied. 56 cases (0.084 percent) of pheochromocytoma, 50 unilateral and 6 bilateral, were found in a material of 66782 autopsies. Three of the 6 patients with bilateral pheochromocytomas had an additional medullary thyroid carcinoma with amyloid deposits, while no patient with unilateral pheochromocytoma exhibited this type of thyroid tumor. In families with Sipple's syndrome, however, combinations of unilateral pheochromocytoma with medullary thyroid carcinoma do occur. No typical coincidence of pheochromocytoma with other malignant tumors could be demonstrated in our material, although this possibility is discussed in the literature.