Kidneys or Arteries?

Diagnosis of high blood pressure--a disease largely confined to middle age--has hitherto been based chiefly on the assumed presence of incurable hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis). Now come Dr. Henry A. Higley, pathologist of the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital, and Dr. Cyrus W. Field, of Bellevue, Manhattan, who say that a large majority of high blood-pressure cases are due to other causes, particularly to abnormal conditions of the blood due to inactivity of the kidneys. They are using a formula of Dr. D. D. Van Slyke, of the Rockefeller Institute--a method of determining the functional activity of the kidneys which makes possible the improvement of certain cases of high blood-pressure by dietary methods. In such cases, and even in acute cases in which apoplexy is a danger, the condition may be greatly reduced or arrested by this method, which has been known to pathologists for several years, and was first investigated by a French physician, Ambard.