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Cardiovascular Disorders

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Essential Hypertension

"...In animals and man variable vascular reactivity to stressors such as pain and cold has long been felt to be in part genetically determined, and the same is felt about individual variability of response to emotional threats. Racehorse owners and breeders of dogs and cattle would be amazed that anyone should think otherwise. However, it has been fashionable for some doctors, sociologists and psychologists to attribute human behaviour only to environmental factors..."

Cardiac Arrhythmias

"...When someone first becomes aware that his or her normal cardiac rhythm is disturbed, it usually occasions anxiety. Later, when accustomed to the irregularity, alarm may diminish.

Paul D. White pointed out that half the people with premature contractions (ectopic beats) are unaware of them, a finding amply confirmed since by 24-h ECG recordings. Massie, Cook and Cashman and Calvert et al. found ventricular ectopic beats in 62% of 283 healthy, middle-aged men compared with 85% of patients with coronary heart disease...."

Ischaemic Heart Disease

"...In an investigation of Ischaemic Heart Disease in 250 000 employees of the Bell Telephone Company it was found that it was not the tycoons at the top who were most at risk but people in the middle echelons. The highest incidence in this group was among those who had had a college education but had not progressed beyond middle management. Possibly the greatest surprise was that personnel who had not had a college education but by sheer ability had reached top management, showed the same relative immunity from IHD as their college-educated, high-flying colleagues...."