No description available.

The primary objective of this study has been to determine timr prevalence of growth hormone deficiency among Scottish school children. To achieve this it m first essential to identify a large number of very small children in a defined population and it was proposed to study thereafter all those comprising the smallest 1% in the population. Clearly, sany children had factors other than growth horsona deficiency contributing to their short stature, and therefore the literature relating both to this and the influences of genetic, environmental and other biological factors upon growth has been reviewed. The method originally proposed for identifying these children was based upon a central computer-baaed file of the heights of children at the school entrance medical inspection. Intractable difficulties inherent in this approach soon emerged and, as these would have prevented the identification of all short children within a defined population and made it impossible to accurately estimate the true prevalence of growth hormone deficiency, this method had to be discarded. The revised method entailed personally screening the heights of 48,221 children attending all education authority schools and & selection of independent schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, and identifying from them all children who were -2.5 standard deviations or more below the mm height for their chronological age (N = 449). Permission was sought from the parents of those found to be of small stature to undertake studies of the medical and social background and where appropriate to gather auxological data. Where no definite cause for short stature was apparent, these children were screened for growth horaone deficiency wherever possible. Children who failed to produce adequate growth hormone levels on the screening test and/or those whose twelve aonth height velocities were below average (less than the 25th centile for chronological age) were then further investigated for growth hormone deficiency with an insulin tolerance test. A group of control children from a similar social background but of average height for age was also selected in .Edinburgh and Glasgow. c.oae of the social and medical data from this group has been compared to the group of children with short stature in an attempt to identify any significant differences, the study has confirmed the strong association of previously recognised environmental and genetic factors with short stature. The results of the study also suggest that severe growth horaone deficiency is a acre comma cause of short stature than previously thought and that it frequently remains undiagnosed for longer than necessary.

During a survey of the aetiology of respiratory diseases in children throughout the winter of 1965 and 1966, it was found that 15 per cent, of 208 young children in the Edinburgh area had complement-fixing antibodies to C. burnetii. The purpose of the following study was to confirm this finding over a longer period of time, during 'which a total of 433 children were studied, and to establish that the complement-fixing antibodies were specific. The study also compares the incidence in children at the time of the study with adults at the same time and children in previous surveys in the same area and investigates possible sources of the infecting C. burnetii.

No description available.

No description available.

The accompanying thesis is a socio-medical account of 329 people (134 men and 194 women) of pensionable age and over on the list of a practitioner in a rural area in the West Midlands of England. The formation of the "sample" is described and its distribution into a age and sex groups and social classes is detailed with a reference to occupations. The background - geographical, social and historical - is briefly discussed. Sections are devoted to isolation, companionship in the home, the importance oi' continuing marriage in old age and to the proximity of offspring. Details are given of housing conditions, water and electricity supplies, sewage disposal and access to telephones.

In Chapter I, the approach taken to the study of records is introduced. Sociologists and historians treat records as only contingently true. However, they do not explicate the source of the contingency. They do not address the basic idea of records which makes the contingency possible. The notion that records are only contingently true stems from a conception of fact as a relation between record and event which parallels a conception of language as a relation of words to things. The event is supposed to produce the record but the record (and recorder) are not supposed to produce the event. Various practical problems with records stem from the need to produce this asymmetric record-event relationship. In Chapter II, an investigation is begun of how the record-event relationship is achieved. It is achieved by the action of "observation". Observation requires an observer's presence but it also requires that the observer's presence not make a difference to the event. If the observer's presence does not make a difference, his record can be analytically identical with the event and therefore the event can be known through the record. The observer's presence is supposed to rid speech of its opinionated character. By being present, the observer need not speak in an opinionated way. He can be a "witness" to the world which speaks for itself. .ua present witness, what the observer can know is time-bound and place-bound. He can know only the "present" time and the "present" place. Records are the kind of Speech observers produce about the present, speech which does not affect things but merely "notes" things. Given that observers can know only the present, records become necessary in order to grant permanence to an observer's kind of knowledge. In Chapter III, the observer-recorder's concept of the present is further investigated. The present in the sense that it can be known is not a moment in time; it is an appearing, self-disclosing thing. Recording, then, presupposes a particular definition of things: things are appearances. Because the event is thought to present itself, the observer need not contribute to it. To say that the observer can see only the present is not to limit the observer to the "physical". It is to limit the observer to anything which can present itself. Finally, it is suggested that the notion that observers can see only one thing at a time can be accounted for in terms of the grounds of observation. The observer sees just one thing at a time since his notion of a thing is analytically identical to his notion of a time. In Chapters IV and V, an attempt is made to apply the analysis of the grounds of records to problems involved in the use of records by hospital bureaucrats. Bureaucrats seeking to use records face a problem in that they were not present when the records were made (and the event happened) and therefore would seemingly have nothing that is not opinionated speech to say about the record. The bureaucrat's solutions to the problem involve putting his own speech at the service of the record just as the observer puts his speech at the service of the event. The first specific solution is discussed in Chapter IV: bureaucrats can subjugate their speech and know events indirectly by "relying" on observers, thereby achieving analytic identity with observers. Concern with reliability on the part of bureaucrats (and sociological methodologists) is explained in terms of the basic grounds of observation. It is shown in some detail that bureaucrats do in fact attempt to ensure that "reliable" records are produced. In Chapter V, the topic is shifted from reliability to completeness. Hospital administrators are concerned with the completeness of records rather than their accuracy. However, the concern with completeness i: not an example of goal displacement since, through the concern with com.leteness, bureaucrats manage to control their own speech, thus attaining the self-same lack of participation that observers attain. By evaluating records in terms of completeness, bureaucrats turn the record into an appearing thing, thus attaining a kind of presence with it. In the conclusion, two implications of our study for further work are developed. 1. Empirical analysis must be seen not simply as a method for finding'; out whether theories are correct since the very idea of beint empirical precludes even asking some ii portant theoretical questions. 2. Just as record-writing can be thought of as an idea which requires grounds, the speech of social theorists can be thought of as requiring a method. A brief attempt is made to "produce" the speech of Goffman and Garfinkel.

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No description available.

No description available.