Great interest today is justifiably directed to the promotion of advances in diagnostic technics and in medical and surgical treatment of cardiovascular diseases, which, in this country, and in many population groups in other countries all over the world, lead all other causes of death, involving many young and middle-aged persons as well as the old.
A recent editorial in The Journal (Death Is Not Unannounced, 199:210 [Jan 16] 1967) called attention to a step forward in the reduction of the hazard of sudden death in the intensive coronary care units of the hospitals of the country, a step worthy of adoption throughout the world. However, it remains true that a distressingly large number of acute coronary patients never reach any hospital at all.
All of our brilliant diagnostic and therapeutic triumphs, important and often spectacular as they are, actually deserve less priority in our investigations than the prevention