The changes in the intima constitute the effort on the part of nature to repair a defect in the vessel wall which is to compensate for the weakened media and the widened lumen. This applies only to true arteriosclerosis, not to the condition produced experimentally by the toxin of the typhoid bacillus, for example. When an artery loses its elasticity and begins to have connective tissue deposited in its walls, the pressure of the blood stretches the vessel which is now no longer capable of retracting when the pulse wave has passed, and, in consequence, the artery is actually lengthened. This necessarily causes a tortuosity of the vessel which can be easily seen in such arteries as the temporals, brachials, radials, and other arteries near the surface of the skin. The exact mechanism of increase of blood pressure is not satisfactorily explained. The smaller arteries all over the body are supplied with vasoconstrictor and vasodilator nerve fibers from the sympathetic nervous system. Normally when an organ is actively functionating the vessels are widely dilated and the flow of blood is rapid. Among the many factors which influence blood pressure and blood supply must be reckoned the psychic. We know that normally there is a certain resistance offered to the propulsion of blood through the arteries by the contraction of the heart. This tonus is essential to the maintenance of an equalized circulation. The muscular arterioles throughout the body by their tonus serve to keep up the normal blood pressure and to distribute the blood evenly to the various organs. Contraction of a large area of arterioles increases the blood pressure and, strangely enough, the arteries respond to increased arterial pressure, not by dilatation, but by contraction. It would appear that rise of blood pressure tends to throw increased work upon the musculature of the arterioles. This may be sufficient only to cause them to hypertrophy, but further strain may easily lead to exhaustion and to dilatation. "As a result strain hypertrophy of the intima shows itself with thickening, and it may also be of the adventitia, resulting in chronic periarteritis. And now with continued degeneration of the medial muscle in those muscular arteries, fibrosis of the media may also show itself. I would thus regard muscular hypertrophy of the arteries and fibrosis of the different coats as different stages in one and the same process. Whether these peripheral changes are the more marked, or the central, depends upon the relative resisting power of the elastic and muscular arteries of the individual respectively." (Adami.)