ABSTRACT
A great deal of the infant and child mortality was due to malnutrition, sometimes causing direct specific disease, sometimes only leading to an impaired vitality. In this connection the histories of rickets and scurvy are important, not only in themselves, but as indicators of the general condition of the food supply of the population. Rickets is a disease of malnutrition in childhood which shows itself in the lack of proper calcification of the bones. Scurvy is thought of as a disease peculiar to seamen but a knowledge of its cause at once suggests that it must frequently have occurred on land before the modern developments in agriculture and transport. Modern medical science distinguishes between true rickets and "scurvy rickets". Owing to the improved dietary, scurvy ceased to be a cause of death among the civilian population though doubtless mild cases occurred in times of scarcity.
