Despite a plethora of theories, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) has remained an enigma. There has persisted in the literature a constant conflict as to the existence of the syndrome, a question as to whether it is one syndrome or several, and a debate as to whether the origin is psychic, somatic, or both. Advances in endocrinology, specifically in radioligand assays, allowing for accurate hormone measurements, have precipitated a more scientific evaluation of PMS in recent years. Nonetheless, diffi- culties have persisted in accumulating well-documented data because of the protean nature of the...

Years of involvement, firsthand experience and research at the Menopause Clinic of the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, exist as the background to this book. The Clinic itself, however, as one of the first in the world to be established, if not the first, has a story and a lesson of its own to offer, and is therefore deserving of a brief description as the preface to the book. In 1967, shortly after Christiaan Barnard had completed the historical first human heart transplant at the Groote Schuur Hospital, I happened to be in West Berlin and was invited to visit a major international...

Three International Congresses on the Menopause have been held during the last five years, evidence of the explosive increase in the scient- ific study of this subject. The first, held in La Grande Motte, near Montpellier, France, inJune 1976, was designed to provide a consensus on menopause research (van Keep et al., 1976). The second, held in Jerusalem, was planned to assess the developing research (van Keep et al., 1979). The objective of the third congress, convened inJune 1981 in Ostend, Belgium, under the auspices of the International Menopause Society, was to explore areas of...