In the first edition of his great poem The Vanity of Human Wishes Doctor Johnson warns us that the scholar’s life is not an easy one: “There mark what ills the Scholar’s life assail, / Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail.” Of these hazards, perhaps only the first two remain; and certainly scholars in medicine starve in no garrets. But the controversies on which they expend their energy can be prolonged and vigorous, sometimes—or always, according to Schopenhauer—truth seeming a lesser imperative than victory.

Among the most famous controversies in 20th century medicine was the momentous one between Sir George Pickering (1904-80) and Sir Robert Platt (1900-78) over the nature of hypertension: whether high blood pressure was merely …