236 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



water could not but receive large quantities of lime salts as a 

 daily constituent of their diet. Further, analysis shows that 

 most of the patent farinaceous foods on the market contain large 

 quantities of lime salts as calcium carbonate or phosphate, but 

 very often recourse to such foods does not prevent the outbreak 

 of rickets. It is, of course, possible to maintain that the fault 

 lies not in the deficiency of lime salts in the food, but in a failure 

 to absorb the lime salts into the system, but in this case the real 

 point we have to consider is the factor which brings about the 

 loss of absorptive power. 



Another common belief is that the condition is due to a lack 

 of fat in the diet. It is known that it is the children who have 

 been brought up on patent starchy foods with little or no fresh 

 milk who become subject to rickets. The experiments of Mr. 

 (now Sir John) Bland-Sutton on the animals at the London Zoo 

 are also quoted as supporting this theory. He found that young 

 monkeys removed from their mother and fed on vegetable food 

 became rickety, whilst two young bears fed almost entirely on 

 rice and biscuits died of the same disease. The most striking 

 results were obtained with the lion cubs. It had been the 

 custom to remove the young cubs from their mother at quite 

 an early period of their existence, and to feed them on raw 

 horse-meat instead of on mother's milk. But they invariably 

 became rickety to such a degree that it was impossible to rear 

 them. The condition was typical of rickets — the same feeble- 

 ness of muscle, general debility, bending of bones, etc. With 

 a single exception, the successive litters of young cubs lived but 

 a few weeks and then succumbed. More than twenty litters 

 had been lost in this way. Then Mr. Bland-Sutton appeared 

 on the scene. The litter of cubs then being reared had been 

 weaned at the end of two weeks and put on the horse-flesh 

 diet. They had rapidly become rickety, and one had already 

 died. Mr. Bland-Sutton ordered a mixture of milk, pounded 

 bones, and cod liver oil to be added to the horse-flesh, the other 

 conditions being exactly the same as before — the same den, the 

 same amount of warmth, light, air, etc. The results were most 

 startling; improvement immediately set in, and in three months 

 all signs of rickets had disappeared. The animals grew up 

 strong and healthy — a unique event, it is stated, in the history 

 of the Zoological Society. 



But are these results to be attributed to the beneficial effect 



