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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and the enfeebling infirmities and sufferings of tbose who survive. 

 This is what took place in France during the long period of war that 

 prevailed at the close of the eighteenth century and during the first 

 empire. 



Among the causes that operate upon the stature of individuals, con- 

 sidered separately, the first place is given to age. The growth of the 

 infant, of the youth, and of the young man till maturity, is not pro- 

 portional to their ages. It is more rapid in the earliest years, then 

 keeps slackening till the time when the man, having reached maturity, 

 ceases to grow. His stature then remains stationary till the approach 

 of old age, after which it diminishes till the end of life. Some physi- 

 ologists have tried to determine the law of the mean advance of growth. 

 Buffon has given, month by month for the earliest infancy, afterward 

 year by year, the growth of a young man. Dr. Lorain has represented 

 graphically the variations in the growth in stature and weight of two 

 children ; during the first year for one of them, Jean Lorain (Fig. 3), 



and during the first two years for Juliette R (Fig- 4). In these 



graphics the lower curve corresponds with the stature, and the upper 

 one with the weight; and they enable us to observe the arrest of growth 

 that may have been caused by the sufferings of the child. In Jean 

 Lorain's curve we see the pause that took place when the subject was 

 vaccinated, an arrest which continued, accompanied by a considerable 

 loss of weight, during a period of pneumonia. The occasion of the 

 appearance of the first two teeth also caused an arrest of growth. We 



can see in like manner on Juliette R 's curve pauses of growth in 



both lines, corresponding with indisposition. 



Quetelet has represented the mean increase of stature according 

 to age by a curve. The curve has a clearly-defined parabolical form 



1 S 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 IS 13 14 15 16 U 18 19 SO 



Fig. 5. Parabolical cprve, representing, by millimetres, the increase in height accord- 

 ing to age. (From Quetelet's " Anthropometry."') 



(Fig. 5). It supposes the child to be fifty centimetres (or twenty 

 inches) at birth. While this curve represents the mean, there are 

 in reality very characteristic differences in the course of growth of 

 children. Independently of the influence of sickness, accidents, ex- 



