ABSTRACT
The present volume describes and illustrates the successive steps in the natural history of human atherosclerotic disease-from the initial, only microscopically visible, lipid-filled macrophages in susceptible locations of arteries to lesion forms that produce clinical symptoms. Much of the information comes from a study of atherosclerosis in a large population extending in age from birth to middle-age. The lesions of this younger population reveal mechanisms of development and progression more clearly than do the lesions of old people. The latter lesions are generally the product of many components produced by sequential processes that cannot be resolved and understood when observed heaped on top of each other.
