Dwarfism in Healthy Children: Its Possible Relation to Emotional, Nutritional and Endocrine Disturbances

CHILDREN in good health who are receiving an adequate diet tend to follow a relatively standard pattern of growth and maturation. Although moderate deviations from the average trend are commonly considered to be normal physiologic variations, extreme deviations suggest that some abnormality exists. In the past few years more than 100 abnormally short children have been encountered in the pediatric clinics of this hospital. In approximately 50 per cent of these patients the stunted growth could be related to a definite disturbance in the pulmonary, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, renal, hepatic, skeletal or endocrinologic system. There remained, however, a group of 28 . . .