There is plenty of evidence from the mummies of Egypt that atheroma and sclerosis were common, not only in advanced age, but in the middle years of life. We cannot know intimately the life that these old people lived, but we can pretty well picture from history both the height of luxury and the nervous strain. Civilization brings without doubt more comfort, more luxury, and more scientific knowledge, but it seldom brings more true personal wisdom. The philosophical calm and contentment with simple pleasures, and wise simplicity of life, are still the exception. To use a slang expression, we are nearly all of us “on the make,” stretching forth eager hands and hearts towards the will-o’-the-wisp of wealth and advancement, while we let the real values and beauties of life pass us by and so we continually miss our markets. The great war has taught us one good lesson, viz., that we can live and be well--nay, better--on much less food and on simpler than was our former custom; but it has increased, at any rate for the present, the struggle for and the pain of mere existence. We must nevertheless be optimistic, and hope that the great advance in science may soon make life easier, and the food of the world once again sufficient for its inhabitants; then, please God, materialism may shrink into the background and things spiritual come into their own. Not, however, by a reformed and wiser life alone do I hope to show the more excellent way, but to show that modern science has placed in our hands a preventer of decay and a prolonger of life and energy. I cannot promise that this discovery will take twenty years off a woman’s life and put twenty years on to her beauty, but I know that it will give many more years of fruitful and enjoyable work, with greater strength and better health. CHAPTER II ARTERIO-SCLEROSIS: ITS NATURE AND ITS CAUSES The thickening chiefly of the middle coat of the arteries that we find in this disease is the first pathological sign, and it implies that morbid structural changes have begun; but long before this occurs, the predisposing causes have been at work. The actual structural change is the visible effect of the law that over-use of a muscle produces over-growth or hypertrophy. This is not a law of disease, but of purposeful utility, designed to meet emergencies of life. Still there is a further law in nature, that long-continued excessive use of any muscle leads to a form of hypertrophy which cannot maintain its vitality, but degenerates. Arteries must be treated as muscles, for their muscular coats contract and dilate, as circumstances demand, under the control of the nervous system. Dr. George Oliver, in his third edition of _Studies in Blood Pressure_, among his fundamental data lays down this law: