RICKETS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 329 
attention is drawn in most veterinary books ; but we also 
find it recorded that young rickety animals suffer from irre- 
gularities of digestion, swelling of the abdomen, and weak- 
ness. The changes undergone by the bones of rickety 
animals are, increase of volume — especially of the ends 
of the bones — imperfect calcification, and consequent 
distortion. 
It affects exclusively 1 young animals, and, perhaps, espe- 
cially those which are unable to obtain a good supply of 
milk. Although inutritious food is considered to be an 
important element in the causation of rickets by some authors, 
several other conditions — e. g. cold, wet, and bad ventilation 
— are mentioned at the same time. Some consider this 
disease to be hereditary, and to be specially feared by those 
who breed in and in ; and, in connection with this opinion, 
we may note the belief that certain dwarfed or deformed 
breeds of animals are the descendants of rickety ancestors. 
In the Horse , rickets is rare, if indeed it occur at all. 
Hurtrel D'Arboval [Diet. Veterinaire , Art. “ Rachitisme") 
says that it is less common in this animal than in any other 
species; but he afterwards mentions that he has seen colts 
die of the results of rachitis in their first or second years, 
the symptom being inability to stand, extreme emaciation, 
dry skin, and diarrhoea. This account does not fit with that 
of rickets in other animals, for no mention is made of any 
deformity. Professor Dick says that “ in foals there is some- 
times an appearance of it, but they soon get well" ( Manual of 
Veterinary Science, 1862, p. 41). 
We may just mention in connection with this animal, that 
the disease known in America as (i Big-head," and very fully 
described by Professor Yarneli and Dr. George Harley in the 
several numbers of the Veterinarian for 1860, and in the 
Transactions of the Pathological Society , does not seem to be 
rickets. Gamgee calls it osteoporosis [Domestic Animals in 
Health and Disease , vol. i, p. 20). 
Ox. — Rickets is mentioned incidentally by Finlay Dun as 
occurring in calves, in connection with an inherited (i scro- 
fulous diathesis.^ He says that such calves “ are troubled 
with indigestion and acidity of the stomach ; their appetites 
are capricious, their skins scurfy, their legs rickety, and their 
1 We do not find any records of rachitis in Dr. Crisp’s account of post- 
mortem examinations of animals which died in the Zoological Gardens ; pro- 
bably but few of these animals were born in confinement, or subjected to 
artificial treatment until past the rickety period of life. We mentioned a 
fortnight ago in our Museum Notes, a specimen of a rachitic monkey, which 
is in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. 
