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Query: UMLS:C0020538 (hypertension)
 170,190 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The pioneering work of Richard Bright, who introduced the concept of the renal origin of cardiovascular disease, initiated the continuous unfolding of knowledge on renal disease and its close interrelationship with arterial hypertension in the 19th century. Hypertension as a clinically and pathologically defined entity, however, was not established. The partial elucidation of the problem that the diseased kidney was sometimes the cause and sometimes the consequence of elevated blood pressure is not only fascinating but also remarkable, given the crude techniques available to physicians at that time. Subsequent workers came to regard 'Bright's disease' as consisting of several conditions differing in clinical manifestation and pathology. In particular, Johnson and Gull and Sutton drew attention to the small blood vessels in renal disease. Only the invention of a clinically applicable method of measuring blood pressure indirectly allowed Mahomed and Allbutt to show that hypertension may occur in the absence of renal disease. They paved the way for a clear separation of hypertensive renal disease from other forms of 'Bright's disease', culminating in the classification introduced by Fahr and Volhard.
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PMID:Hypertension as cause and consequence of renal disease in the 19th century. 784 82

This paper describes two outstanding contributions in the understanding and treatment of primary arterial hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. In 1896, Sir T. Clifford Allbutt reported a series of clinical cases associated with high intensity in the arterial pulse and no renal damage. He named this hyperpiesis to distinguish it from Bright's disease or chronic renal insufficiency. In the same year, Scipione Riva-Rocci invented the Sphygmomanometer which, in principle, is still used today. Also, this paper describes the research work which would lead to the development of the blood pressure measurement device. This development is as significant now as it was then.
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PMID:[A centennial of two great discoveries in the history of medicine: hyperpiesis and the sphygmomanometer (1896-1996)]. 901 15

Histological examination of the kidney was well under way by the mid-19th century. Pathological changes noted to be present in Bright's disease gave rise to considerable debate in the literature of the time. Toynbee was perhaps the first to note medial hypertrophy and intimal narrowing of blood vessels in the kidney, while Johnson, around the same time, thought that kidney disease was the cause of compressed vessels. Although he later proposed a causal relationship between contraction of vessels and hypertrophy, Johnson never went beyond the insights articulated by Bright himself and failed to make the link between hypertrophy of vessels and persistently raised blood pressure. Traube considered the possibility that cardiac and renal disease could be the consequences of the same unknown disease, but rejected hypertrophy per se as a causal factor. Gull and Sutton disagreed strongly with Johnson and proposed the presence of a general disease which leads to both cardiac hypertrophy and renal disease. But it was Ewald, writing in Germany, who was able to ascribe both cardiac and vascular hypertrophy to increasing tension in the arterial system and he was the first to articulate the effect of hypertension on the kidney.
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PMID:Inference of the existence of high blood pressure as a cause of renal disease in the mid-19th century: observations on vascular structures in the kidney. 1021 36

The realization of the key role for raised intra-arterial pressure as a pathogenetic agent in hypertension is usually credited to Ludwig Traube, but Traube in his writings gives credit for the idea to a little-known English doctor, William Senhouse Kirkes (1822-1864). Kirkes' main interest was in cardiology and vascular disease, and he gave the first account of embolism from vegetations in infective endocarditis in 1852. Three years later, he published a study of apoplexy in Bright's disease, in which he pointed clearly to the role of raised intra-arterial tension in the causation of arterial disease, a point that had eluded Bright, Johnson, and other contemporaries. Kirkes died at the age of only 42 while working on a book summarizing his work on cardiology and renal disease, and the neglect of his contribution probably resulted from his early death. We have traced his life history from the few available records; as a boy, Kirkes was apprenticed to become a surgeon and only later trained as a physician. We place his contributions within the setting of the development during the 19th century of understanding of the relationship between the kidney, vascular disease, and high blood pressure.
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PMID:High blood pressure and the kidney: the forgotten contribution of William Senhouse Kirkes. 1097 3

Stephen Hales was the first to measure blood pressure directly in the horse (1733), and the definitive studies on human nephrins by Richard Bright followed much later (1836). The relation between high blood pressure and renal disease was established by Mahomed (1872). The discovery of renin and its possible link with Bright's disease was made by Tigerstedt and Bergman (1898), but only the experimental production of renal hypertension by Goldblatt and his colleagues (1934) led to the delineation of the role of the kidney in human hypertension by a wide variety of methods.
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PMID:Development of ideas on renovascular hypertension. 1102 90

Elevated arterial pressure had long been surmised from the strength of the pulse. Its association with contracted kidneys and hypertrophied hearts was described by Richard Bright (1789-1858). Microscopic observations of the narrowed and obliterated vasculature initially observed in the kidneys of Bright's disease, and subsequently throughout the body, launched clinical research into hypertension. The description of these findings in the absence of symptoms of kidney disease led to the recognition of primary hypertension. Ultimately, the systematic recording of the blood pressure with a pneumatic cuff and mercury manometer established the significance of hypertension as a distinct disease entity. Subsequent experimental studies established the central role of the kidney in hypertension through the renin-angiotensin system and extracellular volume control. This finding provided the basis for the introduction of diuretics and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, two of the most important and valuable antihypertertensive drugs now available. Thus, the study of kidney disease and function has played a pivotal role in the conceptual evolution of the understanding of hypertension as a disease, the identification of its mechanisms, and the development of clinically useful antihypertensive medications.
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PMID:On the central role of studies on the kidney in the recognition, conceptual evolution, and understanding of hypertension. 1521 90