One morning in 1969, out of the blue, I received a letter which both distressed and astonished me. It was from a Prof. S. R. Das in Calcutta, who requested me to accept, for eventual analysis, a mountain of anthropometric data he had accumulated, as he was ill and did not expect to survive to analyse it himself. The data provided the astonishment; twenty-two anthropometric characters recorded every six months or a year, over a period of 14 years, in a mixed longitudinal study of some 560 children, aged six months to twenty years. Most were in families with siblings also in the study, and every child was measured every time by S. R. Das himself. The archive was unique, combining the personal anthropometry of R. H. Whitehouse in the Harpenden Growth Study and the family approach of the Fels Growth Study. This was a study of which neither I, nor anyone of my acquaintance, had heard. Even in India, Prof. Das' work was scarcely known. It turned out Das was a scholarly man, quiet and unassuming, absolutely committed to his Sarsuna-Barisha Growth Study,just the obverse of the professional showman. Clearly this was not a request I could refuse, although I already had in hand enough projects to occupy Siva himself. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Measurement of Human Growth: A Historical Review....Pages 3-15 Individual Physical Growth Models and Biological Parameters of Japanese....Pages 17-32 Smoothing Centile Curves of Height of Basque Boys and Girls by the Application of the LMS-Method....Pages 33-43 A New International Growth Reference for Young Children....Pages 45-53 Fels and Tanner-Whitehouse Skeletal Ages of School Children 7–13 Years in Oaxaca, Mexico....Pages 55-65 Assessment of Childhood and Adolescents Body Composition: A Practical Guide....Pages 67-75 Front Matter....Pages 77-77 Genetics of Complex Traits with Particular Attention to Fat Patterning....Pages 79-89 Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue Distribution in 7- to 16-Year Old Boys of Calcutta in Relation to Socio-Economic Level....Pages 91-108 Dentofacial Morphology, Growth and Genetics: A Study of Australian Aborigines....Pages 109-122 Riddles in Human Development Patterns: A Few Family Case Study....Pages 123-128 Nutrition in Venezuela at the end of the Millennium....Pages 129-135 Thoughts on Secular Trends in Growth And Development....Pages 137-145 Secular Trends and Longterm Serial Growth Studies....Pages 147-157 Secular Trends in Body Height — Indicator of General Improvement In Living Conditions or of a Change in Specific Factors?....Pages 159-167 Patterns of Growth and Scholastic Performance — A Case Study of the Associated Factors....Pages 169-177 Mental Ability and Cognitive Thinking in Relation to Sex, Pubertal Stage and Socio-Economic Background....Pages 179-201 Front Matter....Pages 203-203 How Genetic Are Human Body Proportions?....Pages 205-221 The Sarsuna-Barisha Longitudinal Growth Study: Dynamics of Growth....Pages 223-236 Linear Components of Growth among Rural Indian Children....Pages 237-250 Growth Stunting among Children, Aged Birth to Five Years, in Peri-Urban Kathmandu, Nepal....Pages 251-267 Front Matter....Pages 203-203 Ethnic and Sex differences in the Skelic Index among Fijian and Samoan Children....Pages 269-279 Skeletal Maturity in Children of Mixed American and Japanese Parentage as Assessed by the TW2-Method....Pages 281-297 Front Matter....Pages 299-299 Somatotypes of Budapest Children....Pages 301-312 Differential Rate of Growth of the Human Body Parts....Pages 313-320 Short-Term Growth....Pages 321-332 Relations Between Head Growth and Psychomotor Development in Low-Birth-Weight Children....Pages 333-340 Growth in Length and Weight of Thalassemic Children in West Bengal, India: A Mixed-Longitudinal Study....Pages 341-349 Back Matter....Pages 351-364
This volume presents a collection of twenty-seven contributions, covering the whole of the research area in human growth and development. It is highly international in the provenance of both authors and subjects, from Kathmandu to Caracas, Oaxaca to Alice Springs. There are papers on the history of the study of human growth, on the modelling of individual growth curves, the construction of population growth reference curves, growth as a measure of population well-being, secular trend, and the much neglected subject of the relation between mental and physical development.
