Blood Pressures in Three New Hebrides Communities.

There has been increasing interest in the normal blood pressures of isolated and unsophisticated communities in the last few years. In particular, several investigators have questioned whether the rise in blood pressure with increasing age which appears to be common to all "Western" peoples is universal for mankind, and they have suggested that this rise is due to the occurrence among Westerners of a condition known as "essential hypertension", which is absent from some communities. Moreover, some workers have postulated a relationship between the incidence of essential hypertension and contact with Western civilization (Lovell, Maddocks, and Rogerson, 1960; Maddocks, 1961).