We present a new analysis of the Coulomb dissociation of nuclei compri
sing a charged core and one or more neutral valence particles at energ
ies of tens of MeV/nucleon and above. The approach assumes only that e
xcitation of the projectile is to the low energy continuum. A successf
ul comparison is made with new high precision measurements of small an
gle deuteron dissociation at 140 MeV incident energy. (C) 1998 Elsevie
r Science B.V.