a fall in pressure. A patient with coronary disease should certainly
not go to any great altitude, while patients with compensated
valvular lesions, he found, were not injured by ordinary heights. He
found that altitude seemed to decrease high systolic and diastolic
pressures, while it even elevated those which were below normal, and
caused these patients to feel better.

Any person who has a circulatory disturbance, and who must or does
go to a higher altitude, should rest for a series of days, until his
blood pressure and blood have reached an equilibrium.

Smith [Footnote: Smith, F. C.: The Effect of Altitude on Blood
Pressure, THE JOURNAL A. M. A., May 29, 1915, p. 1812.] made a
series of observations on blood pressures at Fort Stanton which has
an altitude of 6,230 feet. He took the blood pressure readings in
fifty-four young adults, seventeen of whom were women, and found
that the average systolic reading in the men was 129 mm., and in the
women 121, while the average diastolic in the men was 84, and in the
women 82. Therefore he agrees with Schrumpf that the effect of
altitude on normal blood pressure has been overestimated. In
tuberculosis he found that the effect of altitude was not great. He
does not believe that this amount of altitude, namely, a little more
than 6,000 feet, makes much difference in an ordinary tuberculous
patient. He did not find that artificial pneumothorax made any
important change in the blood pressure. His findings do not quite
agree with Peters and Bullock, [Footnote: Peters, L. S.r and
Bullock, E. S.: Blood Pressure Studies in Tuberculosis at a High
Altitude, Arch. Int. Med., October, 1913, p. 456.] who studied 600
cases of tuberculosis at an altitude of 6,000 feet, and found the
blood pressure was increased, both in normal and in consumptive