Advancing in tandem: clinical endocrinology and clinical chemistry

Here I review some of the recent accomplishments in clinical endocrinology and clinical chemistry, point out the direction of future work, and try to predict some of the advances of the next decade. Endocrinology, perhaps more than any other branch of clinical medicine, is rooted in biochemistry and physiology. Endocrinologists have been leaders in the development of methods, which have been adapted by clinical chemists for wider applications than those conceived originally. For the sake of brevity, I shall not recount the early history of endocrinology in this century--or the enormous progress since Starling coined the term "hormone" and stated the physiological role of these chemical messengers in 1905. Progress in endocrinology in recent years has been astounding.