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What happened to the growth spurt of nineteenth-century adolescents? An essay on the history of a scientific omission1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Walter Vandereycken  and
Ron Van Deth
Walter Vandereycken*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium; and the Department of Psychology, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
*
1Address for correspondence: Professor Dr W. Vandereycken, University Psychiatric Center, B-3070 Kortenberg, Belgium.
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Synopsis

It is common knowledge that puberty is characterized, among other phenomena, by a striking growth spurt. An exploration of the medical literature from previous centuries shows, however, that this feature of adolescence has attracted surprisingly little attention. Although the pubertal growth spurt was known to eighteenth-century physicians, it was neglected for about a century. The influential Belgian scientist Quetelet demonstrated a remarkable scotoma towards the phenomenon. It was only after his death in 1874 that the relationship between puberty and growth spurt became a scientifically established and recognized fact.

Type
Orginal Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 1990 , pp. 767 - 771
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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Footnotes

1

Adapted from a Dutch paper published in Kind en Adolescent, 1987, 8, 15–19.

References

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