Research on the physiological basis of thirst and sodium appetite has been the
subject of explosive growth in the last decade. When Fitzsimons (1979) reviewed
the field in the late 1970s he commented on the arduous task of keeping the
manuscript for his monograph up-to-date and suggested that it might be no more
than an interim account. The extraordinarily rapid progress in this field during
the past decade has supported Fitzsimons' prophetic vision and required another
review after little more than a decade. The information explosion in the past ten
to fifteen years unfortunately also made it necessary to depart from the style of
Fitzsimons' monograph, which presented extensive detail on a large number of
experiments. Instead, I have provided extensive bibliographic documentation to
give the reader access to the primary literature.