Normal, Absent and Pathologic Tonsils in Young Women

The Incidence of Tonsillectomy in School Children

“…This strong admonition, combined with the work of Tilley [27], Paton [25], Layton [20], Warwick James [19], Bradley [2], Wilson [13], and others in this country, and of Cunningham [6] in America, together with the courageous example of Ash [1] in Derbyshire, exerted a definite influence upon medical opinion.…”

“…But to the many-parents or practitioners-to whom enlargement at any age seems always pathological, a study of the work of K. H. Digby [8A], or that of Cunningham [6] on female students in California University may be commended, or of that of E. Neuber [23] in Hungary, who found that in the lower forms of elementary schools children with " hypertrophic " tonsils had a greater average height and weight than those with " normal " tonsils.…”

“…Collins [5] found that 61% of the children, from 10-14 years, of medical officers of the Army, Navy, and public health services, had been tonsillectomized, while Cunningham [6] found that one-third of 12,530 young white women students who entered the University of California between 1920 and 1929 had had an operation for the removal of tonsils; one-third were thought to have normal tonsils, and the remaining onethird had " pathologic " tonsils, including remnants of tonsils or buried or projecting tonsils. But even in the States there are contrasts, and in the country districts of southeastern Missouri only 2% of school children were tonsillectomized in 1931.…”