The triggering event for public awareness seems to have been the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In early 1945, his blood pressure soared to 300/190, and it was clear that this was not a sign of vigor but quite the opposite. When he died soon afterward, aged just sixty-three, the world seemed suddenly to realize that heart disease had become a serious and widespread problem and that it was time to try to do something about it. The result was the celebrated Framingham Heart Study, conducted in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, just west of Boston. Starting in the autumn of 1948, the
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