Low birth weight dwarfism.

In the course of time a variety of names have been given to Sterne's 'dwarf apple-trees': primordial dwarfism (von Hansemann, 1902), ateliosis (Gilford, 1904, 1911), microsomie essentielle (Levi, 1910), nannosomia (or nanosomia) vera, constitutional, proportionate, genetic, and intra-uterine (Russell, 1954) dwarfism. Recently Seckel (1960) has shown that a distinct variety of low birth weight dwarfism exists, which he has called, using Virchow's (1892) original term, 'bird-headed'. All these terms appear to refer to a disorder of growth by implication present at or before birth, in which the individual is of extremely small stature, but otherwise exhibits no recognizably causative disease. For the purposes of this paper the name 'Low Birth Weight Dwarfism' is used to cover all the terms mentioned above. It is surprising that the birth weights of such cases have received so little attention. Troen and Blumberg (1948) did, however, make a brief study of 40 cases of dwarfism and showed that their mean birth weight was significantly lower than that of normal individuals. Apart from this paper, in which many essential clinical details are lacking, there is little definite information in the literature. The continued use of eponymous terms based upon the early descriptions of dwarfism and infantilism has blurred the differences between hypopituitary dwarfism and low birth weight dwarfism. The condition described by Lorain (1871) and subsequently by Ldvi (1908) appears to have been secondary to tuberculosis (Lorain), while Levi's cases probably suffered from congenital syphilis