Articles in TIME'S Medicine section often alert readers to unsuspected ailments or direct them to cures. This week's cover story on hypertension will almost certainly have similar results. Twenty-three million Americans fall victim to this quiet, almost symptomless epidemic, but only about 3 million are getting proper treatment. An unnecessarily lethal disease, hypertension "makes a major contribution to the leading causes of death in America -- heart disease and stroke," says Associate Editor Peter Stoler, "but it's being conquered. There's no question that if you get treatment you can live a lot longer." For the story, Stoler and Reporter-Researcher Jean Bergerud, a veteran of 22 years in the Medicine section, interviewed pioneer blood-pressure researcher Dr. John Laragh, our cover subject, and pored over such weighty medical tomes as Laragh's 900-page Hypertension Manual. Notes Senior Editor Leon Jaroff, who edited the story: "Hypertension sounds like a disease of nervous, high-strung individuals. Many people are embarrassed to admit that they have it. We'd like to clear away some of the misconceptions."

Watergate has been one of the most demanding stories TIME has ever reported. For over two years, TIME'S Washington correspondents covered, and helped to unravel, the conspiracy. In critical phases -- the Saturday Night Massacre, the impeachment hearings and Nixon's resignation -- all 21 men and women in the bureau worked together to cover events and reaction. Leisurely weekends became a vague memory for those assigned to the story full time, since key newsbreaks so often came on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, hours when sources were least accessible. Looking back from the perspective of last week's verdict, Correspondent Hays Gorey summed up the bureau's mood: "None of us would have given up the chance to take part in history the way we did." Senior Writer Ed Magnuson, who wrote this week's Watergate article, has turned out 21 cover stories on the conspiracy. Said he: "This story has been both arduous and satisfying for a journalist. But it yields no joy. High officials who used lawless means to manipulate the public they were supposed to serve have been stopped. But it was too close a call."

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