All the conflict during the past few years over the subject of blood pressure has revolved around this much overworked word. Hypertension means high pressure, and yet it carries with it a suggestion of high pressure which is harmful to the individual. As a matter of fact hypertension is a compensatory process, it is often a saving process in spite of the fact that it carries possibilities of harm in its possessor. It has been made a fetish, a god to fall down before and worship and it has been the means of holding a torch of fear over a patient which has not been lost on the charlatans. Popularization of blood pressure has brought its crop of evils, no one of which has been as fruitful in dollars to unprincipled quacks as hypertension. Hypertension is the expression on the part of the circulation to meet new conditions in the tissues so that all tissues will be nourished and all will be enabled to function. Looked at from that point of view it is a conservative process and in many cases it is. It is not an average normal state, but it is normal state for the man who has it in chronic form. Hypertension should be viewed rationally and its proper place in the whole make-up of the patient determined. Hypertension is a relative term. What might be high pressure in a man of sedentary habits who reaches the age of fifty, might not be high pressure in a full blooded formerly athletic man of the same age. Temporary hypertension due to excitement, exercise, etc., must be kept in mind. It is not intended to convey the impression that hypertension is of no moment. It is a matter for investigation, but not a matter to worship as the all-in-all.