Admissions rates for children went down by almost half at an Oxford, England, hospital emergency room on the weekends during which the last two books in the "Harry Potter" series were released, according to British researchers.
"Given the lack of horizontal velocity, height, wheels or sharp edges associated with this particular craze," said lead researcher Dr. Stephen Gwilym of John Radcliffe Hospital, "we were interested to investigate the impact the Harry Potter books had on children's traumatic injuries during the peak of their use."
Gwilym and his team looked at how many children ages 7 to 15 went to Radcliffe's E.R. with musculoskeletal injuries on the 2003 weekend after "The Order of the Phoenix" was published, and on the 2005 weekend of "The Half-Blood Prince."
They compared these numbers with admissions over a three-year period and found that admission rates dropped by almost half despite the kind of pleasant summer weather during book release weekends that gives youngsters ample opportunity to bung themselves up doing things like playing quidditch.
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