Statistics prove that there are more deaths between the ages of 40 and 50 from cardiovascular-renal disease, that is from heart, arterial and kidney degenerations, than formerly. Whether this is due to the high tension at which we all live, or to the fact that more children are saved and live to middle life, or whether the prevention of many infectious diseases saves deficient individuals for this middle life period, has not been determined. Probably all are factors in bringing about these statistics. While the continued use of alcohol may not cause arteriosclerosis directly, it can cause such impaired digestion of foods in the stomach and intestine, and such impaired activity of the glands, especially the liver, that toxins from imperfect digestion and from waste products are more readily produced and absorbed, and these are believed by some directly or indirectly to cause cardiovascular- renal disease. Hence alcohol is an important factor in causing the death of persons from 40 to 50 years of age. The question of whether or not a person smokes too much, and what constitutes oversmoking, will soon be asked on all insurance blanks. As tobacco almost invariably raises the blood pressure, and when the blood pressure again falls there is again a craving in the man for the narcotic, it must be a factor in producing, later in life, cardiovascular-renal disease. Hence an increased systolic blood pressure must be in part interpreted by the amount of tobacco that the person uses. BLOOD PRESSURE AND PREGNANCY Evans [Footnote: Evans: Month. Cyc. and Med. Bull., November, 1912, p. 649.] of Montreal studied thirty-eight pregnant women who had eclampsia, albuminuria and toxic vomiting, and found the systolic pressures to vary from 200 to 140 mm. He did not find that the highest pressures necessarily showed the greatest insufficiency of the kidneys, but that the blood pressure must be considered in conjunction with other toxic symptoms. In thirty-two cases he was compelled to induce labor when the blood pressure was 150 mm. or under, while in four cases with a blood pressure over 150 mm., the toxic symptoms were so slight that the patients were allowed to go to term and had natural deliveries. A rising blood pressure in pregnancy, when associated with other toxic symptoms, is indicative of danger, and Evans believes that a systolic pressure of 160 mm, is ordinarily the danger limit.