1 Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York
In the current flurry of excitement, and dismay, at the relative ranking of the United States mortality rates,1 I should like to direct the reader's attention to a 25-year-old article which should make usand also our Swedish colleaguesfeel even worse.
I refer to Sigismund Peller's study of the health of the ruling families of Europe over the last 400 years.2 One of the calculations which Peller made was that of the infant mortality rates for this group of favored citizens.