HIGH AND LOW BLOOD PRESSURE
- Leslie Thomson
FOREWORD
A couple of years after writing his classic The Heart, James C. Thomson produced a companion work, High and Low Blood Pressure, which extended the principles to a wider field. The second book was regularly reprinted over about twentyZthree years, but the publishers decided against further issue after 1962. We still receive requests for the book, and what follows is an attempt to reZstate the essential points in a concise fashion.
CHAPTER“1 — CLARIFICATION
Many unfortunates have been told that they suffer from ‘blood pressure’ but few are given any explanation of what that signifies. Often it means little in itself, but may give rise to serious anxieties. Often the diagnosis is incorrect, because too little regard is given to the whole state of the patient. Even where diagnosis is technically accurate, the treatment based thereon may be inappropriate, because the physician has failed to recognise primary causes and directs his efforts at suppressing symptoms. These comments may themselves seem to lack positive value, but their significance should become clear as we proceed. Even the gravest abnormality of blood pressure is but a symptom of some irregularity of structure or function elsewhere, and it often calls for real patience to follow the links and so discover what adjustments are necessary; even more patience to persevere with the reforms which these entail.