The following report of an investigation of inflammatory changes in the appendix during early infancy is made from the autopsy findings in 200 consecutive cases at the New York Foundling Hospital, from January to September, 1910. The patients selected were the youngest possible, and comparatively few exceeded three months in age.
Ribbert1 found that obliterative changes in the appendix, regarded by him as a process of physiologic involution, occurred during the first decade in 4 per cent, of cases. MacCarty,2 in an extensive study of the material of the Rochester, Minn., clinic, found that partial obliteration of the lumen of the appendix might be present as early as the fifth year, and complete obliteration was seen as early as the tenth year. He estimates that the average time necessary for complete obliteration of the lumen of the appendix is approximately four years, and believes that pathologic processes must