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P: Along with the postwar trend toward earlier marriage, a major reason for the nation's big surge in population is the increasing fertility of the individual U.S. mother. Last week the Census Bureau reported that between 1950 and 1954 the rate of childbearing by all U.S. mothers (aged 15 to 49) rose a whopping 11 1/2%. P: Investigating their state's notoriety as a "stone area," two University of North Carolina doctors reported that too much spinach is a major cause of kidney stones. The stones are caused by excess oxalic acid in the diet, said Researchers James C. Andrews and Claude L. Yarbro, and the "much-praised spinach is one of the worst offenders." P: In Morristown, N.J., the Morristown Memorial Hospital installed a new device, aimed at giving unwelcome visitors, e.g., children under 14, a chance to be seen by and chat with patients from a distance. The gimmick: a special TV hookup that employs existing TV sets in rooms, a camera and transmitter in the visitors' room, and an unused local commercial channel.

Cost of installation: $2,500 per hospital. P: In Bordeaux, France, a district court set a legal precedent for all France, ordered the government to pay damages to parents of eight local schoolchildren who developed abscesses in 1949 as a result of compulsory vaccination against TB. P: Manhattan Obstetrician Alan F. Guttmacher reported that multiple births (twins or better) occur far more frequently among Negroes than whites, run highest among women 35 to 39 years old. The incidence of quadruplets among whites is once in 570,196 births, among Negroes once in 237,897. For triplets, the current ratio is one to 9,828 births among whites, one to 5,631 among Negroes. Twins occur far more frequently: one in 92.4 white births, one in 73.8 Negro births.

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