ABSTRACT
Completely apart from their findings of the effects of the various treatments, doctors began noticing a lowering of patients’ blood pressure that seemed to be associated with the record keeping itself. That is, a correlation was noted between keeping a record of one’s blood pressure over time and a subsequent reduction in one’s blood pressure. Of course, such a relationship does not imply cause and effect. How could putting numbers on a sheet of paper cause one’s blood pressure to decrease? Isn’t this a little like the old prediction that when soft drink sales increase so does the rate of death by drowning? The cause is neither; it is the warmth of the sun that causes people to drink more and swim more.
