Rickets (this name being preferable to Rhachitis, whose etymology gives a false idea of the nature of the disease) is a disease due to general malnutrition and resulting in faulty growth of bone structure, the particularly conspicuous etiologic feature being deprivation of calcium and magnesium phosphate, resulting in failure of ossification. It is not hereditary in the strict sense that its existence in either parent tends to reproduce it in the offspring. It rather frequently, however, develops ante partum, apparently without regard to whether the mother is herself rickety or not, but owing to her present inadequate nutrition.

It is commonly stated to be rare before the sixth month but this statement apparently applies only to the conspicuous symptoms. It rarely develops after the eighteenth month but a late form is described occurring even from the ninth to the twelfth year.

Rickets is of frequent but isolated occurrence on account of bad nutrition of the mother during pregnancy or lactation or on account of inadequate artificial alimentation, in practically all parts of the world. It might almost be called endemic in European cities, among slum dwellers and especially in negroes and recently foreign communities in America, depending upon no true racial or geographic tendency but upon poverty, bad hygiene and poor nutrition.

Its occurrence in breast fed children should lead to examination of the milk - unless the general evidences of malnutrition of the mother are unmistakable - with a view to substitute feeding. Beef juice, egg yolk, peptonoids etc., as well as lime preparations, may be used to supplement either breast or artificial feeding. Cereal and saccharine foods should be used in relatively small quantities, though strained gruels are a valuable adjunct to diet and espec.