In the thirty years since the advent of efTective pharmacologic treatment for hypertension, the world ofthe hypertensive has been transformed beyond recog nition. The first change involved only malignant hypertensives with enough residual renal parenchyma to survive. Such a hypertensive could trade inevitable renal failure - unless an intracerebral bleed occurred first - for a rigid regimen which prevented his blood pressure from destroying him but which was asso ciated with nearly intolerable side effects. Over the next 20 years, increasing numbers of patients with hypertension of decreasing...