NORMAL, ABSENT AND PATHOLOGIC TONSILS IN YOUNG WOMEN: A COMPARISON OF HISTORIES

A recent government report 1 estimates that about one third of all operations performed since 1924 among the American urban population were for the removal of tonsils and adenoids. In commenting on this statement, the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association pointed out the urgent need for comprehensive statistical studies of the results of the removal of tonsils to date. 2 More than one third of the young women entering the University of California during the last ten years had had an operation for the removal of tonsils. As a result of the physical examination required at entrance, about one-third were thought to have normal tonsils; for the remaining one-third, the tonsils were recorded as pathologic, as remnants or as buried or projecting, often without indication of their state of health (table 1). The opportunity of contrasting the histories of the three groups of women students—those with normal, those