Symposium on Cardiovascular Diseases, Especially Hypertension.

A symposium of cardiovascular diseases with emphasis on hypertension is featured in the New York number of the Medical Clinics of North America. The discussion opens with an encouraging article on the benign phase of hypertension, pointing out that it can exist for many years despite unfavorable roentgenographic and electrocardiographic changes—a fact to be considered when evaluating either medical or surgical therapeutic results. There follows a group of articles on fundic alterations, electrocardiographic changes and capillary fragility as studied in hypertensive persons. Differential points between the electrocardiogram in hypertension and that in myocardial infarction are well demonstrated, as is the concept that metabolic and arteriosclerotic changes, and not hypertension per se, cause capillary fragility.

Therapy of the hypertensive patient is discussed in a series of articles covering both surgical and medical phases. The conservative regimen of sensible living habits, sedation and judicious administration of thiocyanate is offered as producing results