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In healthy man, regulation of water balance is achieved by the combined effects of the hypothalamic nonapeptide arginine vasopressin, which limits renal water loss, and the sensation of thirst, which promotes ingestion of water. These mechanisms ensure precise and accurate water homeostasis. The importance of plasma osmolality in governing the secretion of vasopressin and perception of thirst has been established in experimental animals (Gilman, 1937; Verney, 1947; Holmes & Gregerson, 1950; Wolf, 1950) and has recently been carefully defined in man (Zerbe & Robertson, 1983). Since the development of sensitive radioimmunoassay techniques to measure arginine vasopressin, the factors governing the secretion of the hormone have proved increasingly amenable to investigation, but serious study of thirst, and its relation to water intake, are still hampered by the semantics of definition and the subjective nature of the sensation. There has been much debate over whether thirst is of central origin or a