According to Ronald Hamdy (2001), “The availability of effective and safe medication to reduce blood pressure has dramatically changed the impact and natural course of hypertension, enormously expanded the scope and influence of medicine, transformed the role of physicians in society, and may have been a turning point in the history of mankind.” Discovering that people have high blood pressure allows physicians to prescribe their patients with the correct medicine to treat the high blood pressure. Before the development of medications to reduce or prevent hypertension, there was very little that could be done to manage it (Hamdy, 2001). “The Kempner diet was tasteless, unappetizing, monotonous, and insipid. The only other alternative to the Kempner diet was a bilateral lumbar sympathectomy, a major procedure during that period, and one that was limited to only the relatively young and fit,” according to Hamdy.
It was realized that discovery of medications to gain control of high blood pressure, or hypertension, could potentially bring in a large amount of money. Diuretics–“water pills” used to remove unneeded water and salt through the urine–were the first medications to successfully reduce high blood pressure without causing excessive disadvantageous effects. My science fair project is topic is “Does Age Effect Blood Pressure.” The history