The causal role of chronic mental stress in the pathogenesis of essential hypertension

Abstract

The idea that essential hypertension may arise through psychosomatic mechanisms is an old one. Even before the standard methods of indirect blood pressure measurement were available, Geisbock (in 1905) wrote, concerning his male patients with polycythemia and hypertension (systolic pressure having been measured with a -finger plethysmograph): one finds an unusual frequency of those who as directors of big enterprises had a great deal of responsibility and demanding jobs, and who, after a long period of mental overwork, became nervous.