ABSTRACT
At a symposium in Athens in 1966 Dr Howard, in describing the person least likely to develop atherosclerosis, is reported to have described her as:
a hypertensive, bicycling, unemployed, hypo-β-lipoproteinic, hypolipaemic, underweight, premenopausal female dwarf living in a crowded room on the island of Crete before 1925, and subsisting on a diet of uncoated cereals, safflower oil, and water.
He could also, had he wished, have reasonably described her equally non-atheromatous consort—an ectomorphic Bantu, who works as a London bus conductor, spent the war in a Norwegian prison camp, never eats refined sugar, never drinks coffee and always eats five or more small meals a day. He is taking vast doses of oestrogens to check the growth of his cancer of the prostate.