PEDIATRICS Vol. 31 No. 5 May 1963, pp. 717-718
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MAINTENANCE OF BODY TEMPERATURE OF PREMATURE INFANTS

RICHARD L. DAY M.D.1

1 Professor of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pa.

THE FINDING by William Silverman that prematurely born infants survive more often when kept warm would not have surprised older clinicians. Textbooks have often listed maintenance of a normal body temperature as the first of several logical measures, and various garments and heated beds were devised to insure a normal body temperature. Even as early as before World War II, however, some neonatologists condoned a more permissive attitude. They thought, erroneously, that a steady though subnormal temperature might be preferable to oscillations above and below normal induced by careless manual adjustment of the incubator thermostat. The crudity of early incubators made such permissiveness attractive to those in charge of units for premature infants where skilled nurses were scarce.