The Nature of Essential Hypertension [antikvár]

PREFACE This book was begun in August i960 as I lay on the beach at Walberswick, Suffolk. I wrote it because I had to. It was the direct outcome of controversies that I had had with other workers in the field, both in the medical press and at meetings in Berne and Prague in the summer of i960. This is a controversial book, and it is intended to be so. I have not tried to smooth the corners, because I believe that controversy is the life-blood of science. Disagreement stimulates the collection of further evidence. That, I hope, is an adequate justification. Having finished it, I am conscious of its limitations. One such is omission. Having had occasion to re-read his paper on the pathogenesis of essential hypertension {Brit. med. J., ^949j h 791)» I 3.m reminded that Smirk came to conclusions that were rather similar to those expressed here. At the other end of the world and separated by a hemisphere, we came to our conclusions quite independently, and he has largely escaped the recent controversy. George Pickering