International Journal of Epidemiology 2003;32:337-340
© International Epidemiological Association 2003
Reprints and Reflections |
Commentary: Bread and alum, syphilis and sunlight: rickets in the nineteenth century
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1AD, UK.
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Rickets |
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Rickets was one of the most important hidden diseases of 19th century Britain: hidden because it did not appear among the certified causes of death, and because, not being a killer, it attracted little attention from the public health administration, whose pre-occupation was largely with the causes of death. By 1850, medical men were variously agreed on heredity, early weaning, improper diets, dirty skin, impure air, and a northern climate as playing a part in its aetiology, and in the 1880s its relationship with syphilis was much debated.1,2 Although not a cause of death, it was a concern for the nascent paediatric profession, especially in Europe, where it generated a large literature. The root of that concern lay in the way the disease physically marked those who had suffered from it in early life. As Charles West, founder of the Children’s Hospital at Great Ormond Street remarked, the physical characteristics
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John Snow and medical science |
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Snow’s epidemiology of rickets |
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The geography of rickets |
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