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The paper presents the results of a survey on cases of idiopathic sexual precocity with reference to the relation between physical precocity, chronologic age, IQ and school grade level. The best sampling criterion was a diagnosis of idiopathic sexual precocity. Intelligence tests had been given to the patients over the years by four different people and put on file. The patients fall into three categories with respect to progress in school: (1) those for whom accelerated admission and/or skipping a grade was accomplished (12 cases); (2) those for whom early school admission or later acceleration was recommended, but either not accomplished or not subsequently reported (eight cases) and (3) those for whom school acceleration was not pragmatic and was not recommended (25 cases).

THE view that acne vulgaris is at least partly due to endocrine factors is generally accepted and androgen-oestrogen imbalance appears to be the critical factor (Rothman, 1954). This is supported by the age distribution around puberty and its occurrence in cases of adrenogenital overactivity, such as Cushing's syndrome and virilism, whereas eunuchs and castrated males are not affected. Administration of testosterone or progesterone provokes a marked increase in the size of sebaceous glands in the rat (Haskin et al., 1953). Oestrogens have the opposite effect, resulting in marked atrophy (Ebling, 1948 ; Bullough, 1955). Jarrett (1955, 1959) demonstrated similar effects in human skin by measuring the amount of surface fat. Oestrogens have been used in the treatment of acne since 1935 (Van Studdiford) although side effects have been troublesome. Gynaecomastia developed in eleven of twenty patients treated by Mullins et al. (1960) and Andrewes et al. (1951) reported side effects in sixty-five out of two hundred and sixty-two females and six out of seventy-nine males treated with them. Such results prompted investigation of many oestrogen-like steroids. Bullough (1900), in a series of experiments with mice, showed that all oestrogens active in man produced sebaceous suppression and that some weakly oestrogenic substances had similar activity. One of these is epioestriol and the present paper reports the results of a double blind compared comparison of this steroid and a placebo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of Corynebacterium acnes on the foreheads of male and female children of caucasoid and negroid origin has been investigated using a semi-quantitative technique. Few organisms were recovered from children of less than 12 years of age. The increase in count occurred earliest in negroid girls and latest in caucasoid boys. This may be related to the age of puberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The age at which female mice attain puberty depends to a large extent on their prior experience with male stimuli. Females exposed to male odors mature more rapidly than those denied access to the smell of a male. Such an odor can be termed a priming pheromone because it sets in motion a chain of physiological events which, in this case, culminate in puberty. The demonstration that a social factor such as a pheromone can influence the rate of sexual development in the mouse may have implications for man. It seems likely that a complex of stimuli, certainly not odors alone, may have contributed to the accelerated rate of human sexual maturation which has occurred during the past century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteen members in 4 successive generations of one Chinese family in Malaysia were found to have classical lichen amyloidosis without systemic amyloid involvement. The disease was transmitted as an autosomal dominant trait with variable penetrance. Sex ratio was equal and the onset was around the age of puberty. The extent and severity of the lesions tended to increase with age. No patient subsequently developed the systemic form of amyloidosis. The present findings further strengthen the genetic theory of lichen amyloidosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A family with hereditary hypotrichosis congenita of Marie Uana type, with 4 affected members in 3 generations, is reported. The affected individual is born almost or completely hairless. Hair grows during the first months or years of life but begins to fail at about the age of puberty. The scalp hair is mainly coarse, of large calibre and irregularly twisted. Lashes and eyebrows and body hair are sparse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article presents information on angiokeratoma corporis diffusum. As a rule, angiokeratoma corporis diffusum appears before puberty and, so far, has been exclusively in males. The cutaneous lesions consist of very small lesions, only slightly, or not at all, hyperkeratotic. They are more or less disseminated over the body and consist of pinhead-sized or slightly larger spots or slightly elevated papules which do not disappear on diascopic pressure. Their colour varies from purple to dark blue-red, becoming leaden-hued to black later.

The article presents Section One of the book "Somatic and Endocrine Studies of Puberal and Adolescent Boys," by William Walter Greulich, Ralph I. Dorfman, Hubert R. Catchpole, Charles I. Solomon, and Charles S. Culotta. The section is entitled "Somatic Studies." The section deals with the following subjects: the primary and secondary sexual characters, the order of appearance of some external changes associated with sexual maturation in boys, a proposed method of classifying puberal and adolescent boys, and skeletal status and maturity groups.

The article discusses the group patterns of growth in standing height involved in the study "Sexual Maturation and the Physical Growth of Girls Age Six to Nineteen." It is said that the pituitary gland starts to function above a certain critical level as early as age seven or eight and as late as age twelve or thirteen in different individuals. The available population of the study has been divided into groups according to the age of first menstruation. More information on the subject matter is discussed.

The article discusses the methological problems and specific hypotheses in the study called "Sex Maturation and the Physical Growth of Girls Age Six to Nineteen." The general theory of the study is that patterns of physical growth during the adolescent period are largely under the control of endocrine factors which begin to operate at an early age in some children and at a late age in others. The matter of the close association between the timing of the menarche and the timing of changes in the pattern of physical growth is significant to the general theory.

This article attempts to examine the evidence from which some calculations can be made of the average or modal age at which Roman girls were married. In The Times recently there was a correspondence in which some doctors wrote questioning the assertion by a lawyer that the age of puberty now occurred earlier. They claimed that this was contrary to their clinical experience. Yet in fact there is a mass of reliable evidence from large-scale studies which show that the average age of puberty in Western Europe has been falling by some four months per decade over the period 1830-1960. The correspondence in The Times thus illustrates a point which will be easily granted, that a single doctor's selective perception of individuals and his generalizing reminiscence may be out of focus with the picture gained by scientific observation. This limitation of individual observation has much significance for those scholars of the ancient world, who footnote general assertions about ancient social patterns with a single reference to a typical author, or indeed authors.

The article investigates the premature development of pubic or axillary hair before the physiologic age of puberty. Physicians tend to be concerned since premature growth of sex hair may be the first sign of a functioning tumor of the adrenal cortex or of a gonad, or of hyperplasia of the adrenal cortex, or of true isosexual precocity. Another more frequent stimulus to premature growth of sex hair is the administration of androgenic hormones to the child. The condition is characterized by the isolated development of pubic or axillary hair before the age of eight years in the girl, and before the age of ten years in the boy. The study focus on the case studies of 24 children seen at the Mayo Clinic during the period 1936 through 1966. The medical observations have been recorded and analyzed. Based on the results, it is concluded that sex hair growth is a manifestation of androgenic hormone activity. The presence of premature sex hair necessitates a careful search for sources of androgenic hormones.

The article reports on the social and psychological consequences of early puberty. Nearly all girls have begun to menstruate as they reach the middle forms of secondary schools, and some during their last year or two in junior schools. Recent surveys indicate that in Great Britain the average age of full puberty in boys is about 15 years. This means that in all boys puberty is reached during the time of their secondary school education. Earlier puberty cannot be held to be responsible for the loosening of sexual conventions, the alterations in sexual behavior, and the more tolerant attitude to sexual deviations, which have characterized the social history of the last 25 years in Western countries. The earlier age of puberty for both boys and girls, which most now experience during their years at a secondary school, may well have educational and social advantages as well as drawbacks. Whatever one concludes with respect to the intellectual growth spurt at puberty, there can be no doubt that at puberty both boys and girls are livelier, more idealistic, more receptive, more enthusiastic and easier to teach.

Focuses on the issue of predicting puberty. Use of anthropometric measurements; Relation of physical size and osseous development with puberty.

Examines the indices of physiological maturity and considers the external and indirect signs of an individual's progress toward maturity. Relationship between physiological maturity and personality; Factors associated with normal or deviating personality development; Correlations between maturity scores and pre-pubescent measures.

Focuses on the rationale of assessing the developmental status of children from roentgenograms of the hand and wrist. Determination of the physical developmental status of children; Establishment of school health programs; Increase in the request for routine health examination of children.

Examines the significance of the different stages of puberty for the physical growth and mental development of children of the same chronological age in the U.S. Correlation between growth rates with pubescence periods; Synchronization among the accelerations in weight, height and strength; Diseases as characteristic of the ages of puberty.

The baring on interests and behavior of differences in the age of physical maturation of sex has long been the subject of speculation and investigation. Generally the literature down to twenty years ago assumed that interest in the opposite sex increased sharply with the physical development of puberty. With the publication of sociologist Margaret Mead's studies of sex in primitive societies, cultural factors were given larger place by most writers, but in varying degree. Recognition of the fact that the significance of sex differences in the age of maturation has been overemphasized has practical as well as theoretical application. For instance, the evidence indicates that social competence or the lack of it in children must be attributed primarily to rearing, to parents and the community, not to an inner biological condition. Also emphasis on social conditioning raises question about whether the social precocity of girls in comparison with boys is necessarily inevitable as a result directly or indirectly of an inherent sex difference, or is the consequence of culture and its expression in education in the home and the community. Rather clearly close and continuous association in and out of school of those the same ages and the development of dating, favor marriage between those near the same age.

The article presents an overview of youth sociology. It may be useful to indicate which age groups are meant when one uses the term youth. Roughly, the population of discussion is between 13 and 24 years but a distinction must be made between adolescents, on the one hand and young people or young adults, on the other. Sociologically it is meaningful to subdivide youth, although different ways of doing this are possible. The period of adolescence with all the physiological changes it involves is practically over at the age of 18, in some social and ethnic groups and in some geographical regions of the world much earlier. As a rule, it takes some time before individuals' full psychological reaction to physiological change sets in, leading to new attitudes and forms of behaviour which one can classify as adolescent. The age for the onset of physiological and biological puberty, although in itself a complex phenomenon, has come down considerably. During the last seventy-five years and the variance in certain measurable variables of puberty has probably increased, biological maturation in a relatively homogeneous population is probably less homogeneous than it was fifty years ago. Dating starts earlier and also premarital sexual activities and relations.