FIELDS, GRAPHS, AND OTHER DATA ON FETAL GROWTH. 



61 



Since as many as 252 cases, or 10.9 per cent, out of a total of 2,298 cases of all ages 

 plotted in this series in figure 3, had a weight of over 4,000 grams, while only 14.2 per cent 

 of those with a duration of over 300 days reached or exceeded this weight, it is evident 

 that fetuses with this or a greater weight in our series among those with a duration of 300 

 days and over were only slightly more numerous than among all cases plotted. Kaul, on the 

 other hand, found heavy fetuses 4.2 times as common among those with a duration of over 

 300 days than among births at large. Similar results were also obtained by others, for 

 according to Htibner (1913), von Winkel found heavy fetuses 4 times as common and Hiib- 

 ner 3 times, among those with a duration of over 302 days, as among full-term births at 

 large. It must also be emphasized in this connection that the percentage of heavy cases 

 among this whole series of mature and premature cases is extremely large, especially, as 

 we have seen, when compared with the European statistics. As stated above, the average 

 for the latter is 4.3 per cent, which is only 42.6 per cent as many as in the Johns Hopkins 

 series. That is, heavy fetuses are less than half as common among a series of 78,000 full- 

 term European births as among 2,298 cases of both races with a duration of ISO days 

 and over from the Department of Obstetrics of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. This dis- 

 proportion in the frequency of heavy cases is all the more striking when it is recalled that 

 half of the Johns Hopkins cases were negroes and that the presence of premature births of 

 necessity considerably lowers the percentage of heavy ones. Moreover, the presence of 

 such a large percentage of heavy infants might also be interpreted as confirming the accuracy 

 of the histories, were it not for the fact that heavy infants among those with a duration of 

 300 days and over were but slightly more numerous than among all cases at large. It is 

 true that Kaul found that only 37, or 11.7 per cent, of the heavy infants in a series of 12,886 

 cases had a duration of over 300 days, while in our series this is true of 14.2 per cent. 

 Although Hubner does not give the number of cases, except for himself and von Winkel, 

 he gives the following percentages of heavy fetuses with a prolonged duration as found by 

 the following investigators: 



Disregarding the slight discrepancy between the periods, the average percentage of 

 cases with a duration of over 302 days (of these investigators) is 13.3. The slight difference 

 between these percentages and ours could be disregarded were it not for the fact that the 

 total list of premature and mature fetuses in the Baltimore series contains so many more 

 heavy fetuses per 1,000 than the European. However, there seems to be a great difference 

 in the frequency of heavy fetuses, for Inouye found only 0.93 per cent of heavy cases out 

 of a total of 7,285 births, and it is interesting that all these percentages corroborate the well- 

 known fact that many (Kaul puts it at 50.4 per cent) of the heavy fetuses with a prolonged 

 duration were heavy before the end of the normal duration of pregnancy. 



