Framingham Heart Study in SAS

It has been 70 years since a small, middle-class community 23 miles west of Boston became the centerpiece in helping to solve the mysteries of heart disease.

Smoking. Cholesterol. Blood pressure. Obesity. It's common knowledge today that these all can lead to heart trouble. But in the 1940s, with one in two deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and even after President Franklin Roosevelt died from the effects of heart failure and a massive stroke, the information would have been considered revolutionary.