Cardio-Vascular Disease—Horror and Dismay

Abstract

Cancer and diseases of the cardiovascular system, notably coronary thrombosis and stroke, are classed as diseases of senescence with doubtful justification, as we have seen earlier. Coronary troubles can affect young people, even in their twenties, and some cancers, notably the leukaemias, can affect very young persons from around 8 years old. Both groups of diseases can affect persons of all ages, and it seems more rational to regard them as responses of man to the unnatural environment he has adopted, as with the other diseases already discussed. Both groups of diseases have come into especial prominence during the past thirty years, because they now head the league of death causes in Westernised societies, cardio-vascular disease beating cancer by a short head. They achieved this doubtful distinction when mastery over infectious diseases was attained with the introduction of sulpha drugs and anti-biotics, and particularly when pneumonia and tuberculosis were overcome.