Social Prematurity: A Disease That Has Been Conquered

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by Richard Crews
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When I had my obligatory brush with obstetrics-gynecology during my medical school and internship years in the early 1960s, we used to encounter a condition in which a woman appeared to be, say, six months pregnant but had only been married for three months. The mother and fetus were healthy and the pregnancy was developing well, but all was way ahead of schedule.

The diagnosis carried on the charts for this condition was "social prematurity." To any doctor, nurse, or other medical person reading the chart this meant that the baby was going to arrive well ahead of schedule, but not to worry (as one does about premature births) because only society had a problem.

This condition, social prematurity, has been totally eradicated.
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