Page:A treatise on diseases of the bones (electronic resource) (IA b21289013).pdf/253

 PART III.

CHAPTER I.

RICKETS.

Tr would appear, from some of the recorded histories of rickets, that the condition of the osseous system implied by this term is, in certain cases, accompanied by fever, continuing to the destruction of life. But it is not ordinarily so. The morbid changes in the bones are, in general, accompanied by a state of simple weakness through the rest of the sys- tem. This is the chief constitutional feature of the disease. And yet the changes in the bones, from the state of health to that of rickets, are not such as it might be expected would result from a mere deficiency of their earthy matter, in the view that a certain amount of vigor of system is re- quisite for the separation of the salts of bone, giving to it its proper hardness. But the rickety bone is not simply a soft bone; it undergoes, during the development and sub- sidence of the disease, a scries of curious and somewhat complex changes.

Rickets has been obseryed in the foetus. In the museum of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, there is a foctal skeleton, �