1 Bronx, New York
In this monograph, Dr. Paula Rantakallio of the Department of Pediatrics, University of Oulu, Finland, presents a useful approach to the related problems of prematurity and perinatal mortality. She has studied all of the 12,000 births that occurred in 1966 in the northern part of Finland and noted the characteristics of mothers whose pregnancies ended in delivery of a low birth weight infant or a perinatal death. These mothers were compared to a sample of the total population with respect to a number of variables that could be characterized at the onset of pregnancy ( maternal stature, history of previous pregnancies, etc.).