Abstract
This 81st Annual Meeting of the American Pediatric Society comes in its 83rd year, a venerable age which might suggest impending senility, for institutions, like people, are subject to the processes of differentiation, growth, development, and senescence. American pediatrics, although its birth was postmature, had a vigorous neonatal period and a flourishing infancy when this society came into being. Then followed a rather long latency period, succeeded, especially since the Second World War, by a rapidly accelerating phase of growth. This is shown in Figure 1, depicting growth in the membership of this Society. Even more striking than this recent rapid growth is the fact that, while its early membership comprised almost every physician in North America interested in the medical care of children, including such illustrious figures as Sir William Osier, a drastic change has taken place during the second 40 years of the Society's existence.
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Janeway, C. Growth and Development of Academic Pediatrics in North America: Presidential Address to the American Pediatric Society, April 28, 1971. Pediatr Res 5, 560–565 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197110000-00008
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-197110000-00008