THE CHANGING PATTERN OF HYPERTENSIVE DISEASE

If the situation does allow us to become involved, what should we do? First, we must learn to develop sensitive emotional antennas so that we may recognize and react to the non-verbal as well as to the verbal communication of deep feeling. A common impulse is to offer reassurance with a varying degree of conviction and honesty. Now, it is quite true that this is what many people seek. A person cannot have a disease, let alone die of it, unless his physician or someone else can name it. For one person, this need may be met by calling his indigestion "dyspepsia", whereas another may distrust professional jargon and turn to somebody to act as a moral bUffer-perhaps a pharmacist or the sister at the baby health clinic.