Anthropologiai Közlemények 35. (1993)
1993 / 1-2. füzet - Tanner, J. M.: Human Auxology. Therapy of Individuals and Monitoring of Populations
Human Auxology Therapy of Individuals and Monitoring of Populations James Tanner Emeritus Professor in the University of London, London, U.K. I must begin by saying that when I first visited this beautiful city, this city which has played such a pivotal part in the history of European civilization, when I first visited, almost fifty years ago, in the role of tourist and amateur historian, I little realized that 5 - or is it 6 - visits later I would be standing here, dressed in academic robes and feeling a little stunned, to tell the truth, by this unexpected turn of events. It is a most signal honour you do me, Rector, and I am proud indeed to join the select company of the Universites' Doctors. It is also a special pleasure to be introduced by Professor Otto Eiben, a friend over many years and himself a distinguished auxologist: indeed over the last ten years the prime mover with his colleagues Anikó Barabás and Esther Pantó, of what is arguably the best population survey of growth status of children that has ever been carried out. It is a very special pleasure, too, both for my wife and myself to be here in Hungary, a country which we have good reason to remember with affection. Auxologists, as you surely know, study the growth and development of children. There are two aspects to this, however: some auxologists study the growth of individual children, often in a clinical context, to detect any possible deviation due to disease or undemutrition and to correct it as soon as possible. Others - occasionally the same people with, as we say, a different hat on - study populations of children with the object of assessing the health and nutrition of the various geographical, ethnic and social groups that make up our complex modem societies. The first, the clinical use of auxology, had its origins in German paediatrics of the 1870's. The two Wilhelm Camerers - father and son - played a particularly important part through their research and particularly through their text book chapters. Later the subject claimed its own monographs and textbooks: Suarez Crecimiento: metodos de estudio in 1953, De Toni's Láccrescimento humano in 1954 and my own Growth at Adolescence in 1955. This use of auxology has greatly advanced in prominence, not to mention scandal, following the first succesful treatment of a dwarfed child with human growth hormone by Maurice Raben in 1958 in Boston. Nowadays the hormone, in a completely safe form, is rather easily available, and there is a great temptation for doctors and parents to press for perfectly normal children — say those on the 10th centile of height standards, in other words, the 10% shortest for age in the population - to be given a longterem, and very expensive, course of growth hormone to get them to say the 25th centile (I should make it clear that it is not certain yet that it will do this but the probability from the figures so far is that it will). So what then do the children on the 25th centile do? This is Anthrop. Közi. SS; 3—6. (1993) * Lecture presented at the "Eötvös Loránd University" In Budapest, 7th May, 1993, as the title "Doctor and Professor honoris causa" was conferred on the author.