The use of protoveratrine in the treatment of hypertensive vascular disease

The purpose of this report is to present out experience with the use of protoveratrine in one hundred patients with hypertensive vascular disease. It is not possible to give a final answer as to the effect of this drug as a treatment of patients with hypertension. We cannot do this because the evaluation of any treatment of a chronic disease is hazardous and difficult unless the treatment is curative or unless improvement is prompt and sustained. This is particularly true of a disease such as hypertensive vascular disease which persists for a decade or more in a high proportion of patients and has a variable course. The natural history of hypertensive vascular disease has not been well delineated and the number of drugs and treatments which have been used in the past fifty years, only to be abandoned, is large. It is recognized that the final evaluation of any treatment of a chronic disease requires ten or more years and a large number of patients with adequate control study.