9 8 



of population." After these convincing arguments, I feel 

 there is no necessity for me to apologise for having included 

 leprosy amongst the diet-diatheses. 



The Rachitic Diathesis. Rickets may be defined as a 

 disease of infancy and childhood, producing distortion of 

 the osseous system owing to a deficiency (or, according to 

 Sir William Jenner, a malposition,) of calcareous matters, 

 and of the more essential matters of the bony structure. 

 The disease is said to be sometimes intra-uterine in origin, 

 but this seems doubtful ; it usually begins, however, soon 

 after birth frequently from the fifth to the sixth month, and 

 very often makes its appearance first when lactation is 

 discontinued reaching its climax and subsiding, when, as 

 a rule, milk is no longer given as diet, but the child is 

 allowed to have a variety of mixed food. Although there is 

 some difference of opinion as to whether it is hereditary or 

 not, there can be no doubt, at least, that the state of health 

 and general nutrition of the mother must be ranked as a 

 predisposing cause of great importance. Those who believe 

 in its hereditary nature contend that a diathesis allied to, but 

 not identical with, the scrofulous, is transmitted, but the 

 tendency of general opinion is, that rickets in the great 

 majority of cases is not inherited, nor is it a mode of develop- 

 ment of tuberculosis or of syphilis. I shall, therefore, not 

 discuss it further here. 



The Scorbutic Diathesis is an example of "an acute 

 diathetic disease produced quickly, and quickly cured," 1 

 inasmuch as it rapidly subsides and passes away when the 

 supply of improper food on which it depends is withdrawn, 

 and when the deficiency of vegetable food, which is its 

 exciting cause, is supplied. -The principal reason for 

 1 Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson. 



