Medicine: Blood Vessel Specialists

Ordinary medical minds cannot contain all the minutiae concerning the blood vessels and the circulation of blood which have been discovered during the past ten years. Therefore, last summer, 16 doctors who had persistently and thoroughly studied the behavior of the arteries, veins and smaller vessels formed a special medical club. This week the learned American Heart Association blesses those new specialists by formally adopting their club.

The new specialists have not yet given themselves a name. However, since they rank with heart specialists, who call themselves cardiologists, the new specialists might logically call themselves angiologists and their specialty angiology.

Angiologists treat chilblains, gangrene, varicose veins, phlebitis, ulcers, intermittent claudication, Buerger's disease, arteriosclerosis, hypertension.

Last week the secretary of angiologists, brilliant, Indianapolis-born Dr. Irvine Heinly Page, 34, of Rockefeller Institute, saluted his new responsibilities by publishing a new fact he had just discovered concerning hypertension, or high blood pressure caused by spasmodic constriction in blood vessels. In Science he stated that the brains of hypertensive individuals contain a fluid which causes blood vessels to contract. The vessels most affected are those great ones which supply blood to the stomach, intestines, spleen, pancreas, liver and kidneys. The fluid lies mainly within the all-important cavity of the brain called the betweenbrain.