In the preface to the third edition of this book, published first in 1946 as Adolescent Sterility, the author notes that "the undesirability, from virtually every point of view of pregnancy in the adolescent... has now become the most important message that this book has to deliver." In the chapters that follow, the author's obvious enthusiasm for his subject frequently leads him to offer his conclusions before he adequately presents the data on which he has based them.
Several early chapters, based on extensive literature reviews, set the stage for his message by presenting observations, surely remarkable when the first edition appeared, that the attainment of menstrual function by adolescents cannot be equated with reproductive maturity, along with corroborative data from reviews of sexual maturation in a variety of animals. Beginning a new chapter, "The Biology of Adolescent Sterility," with the claim that "prior to the age of 20 ±