PEDIATRICS Vol. 39 No. 6 June 1967, pp. 883
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THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE HEAD OF NEWBORN INFANTS FIRST MEASURED IN 1785

T. E. C. JR. M.D.

Dr. Joseph Clarke, physician to the Dublin Lying-In Hospital, was the first to measure the head circumference of newborn infants because he believed one reason males were more often stillborn than females was that their heads were larger than female infants and that this might add an extra hazard in the delivery of males. Not being able to find any previous study of head circumference of newborn infants, he measured 20 infants of each sex in July, August, and September 1785, "taking such children as appeared to have arrived at the full period of gestation promiscuously as they happened to be born. . . . For measuring their heads, I made use of a piece of painted or varnished linen tape, divided into inches, halves, and quarters. The varnish has the good effect of preventing the length of such a measure being readily affected by variations in the humidity of the atmosphere; and it has little or no elasticity.

Clarke found that the males had an average head circumference of 13.9 in. (35.3 cm) and the females 13.6 in. (34.5 cm). Perhaps, the present-day practitioner will be surprised to learn that Clarke's measurements of the average head circumference at birth are almost exactly the same as those obtained more than a century and a half later in a much larger and more sophisticated study by Vickers and Stuart (35.3 cm for the male and 34.7 cm for the female).