An X-ray study of male pelves

✍ Scribed by Greulich, William Walter ;Thoms, Herbert

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1939
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 771 KB
• Volume: 75
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-276X
• DOI: 10.1002/ar.1090750304

✦ Synopsis

By means of Thorns' method of x-ray pelvimetry, we recently determined the size and shape of the pelvic inlet of 582 primigravid white women from the obstetrical clinic of the New Haven Hospital and of 104 nulliparous young white women from a somewhat different racial stock and a much more privileged economic group. Most of the latter were students of the Yale School of Nursing. The type of pelvis which is descrbed in textbooks of anatomy and of obstetrics as the 'normal' female pelvis was found in only 14.9% of the clinic women and in only 5.7% of the student nurses. Indeed, only 35.2% of the clinic women and 13.5% of the student nurses had the type of pelvis which, according to the anthropological literature, is proper for white women (Greulich and Thorns, '39).

I n an attempt to determine whether the pelvis of the present-day white male differs from its textbook counterpart as much as does that of the female, we have made anteroposterior and lateral roentgenograms of the pelves of sixtynine Yale medical students. The purpose of this paper is to describe the types of pelves found in that group and to compare them with the male pelvis as it is described in textbooks of anatomy.