relatively commonly in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. History Greek physician Soranus of Ephesus, one of the chief representatives of the Methodic school of medicine who practiced in Alexandria and subsequently in Rome, reported deformation of the bones in infants as early as the first and second centuries AD. Rickets was not defined as a specific medical condition until 1645, when an English physician Daniel Whistler gave the earliest known description of the disease. In 1650 a treatise on rickets was published by Francis Glisson, a physician at Caius College, Cambridge, who said it had first appeared about 30 years previously in the counties of Dorset and Somerset. In 1857, John Snow suggested rickets, then widespread in Britain, was being caused by the adulteration of bakers' bread with alum. German pediatrician Kurt Huldschinsky successfully demonstrated in the winter of 1918–1919 how rickets could be treated with ultraviolet lamps. The role of diet in the development of rickets was determined by Edward Mellanby between 1918 and 1920. In 1923, American physician Harry Steenbock demonstrated that irradiation by ultraviolet light increased the vitamin D content of foods and other organic materials. Steenbock's irradiation technique was used for foodstuffs, but most memorably for milk. By 1945, rickets had all but been eliminated in the United States. Etymology The word rickets may be from the Old English word ('to twist'), although because this is conjectured, several major dictionaries simply say "origin unknown". The name rickets is plural in form but usually singular in construction. The Greek word (, meaning 'in or of the spine') was later adopted as the scientific term for rickets, due chiefly to the words' similarity in sound. Vide: Aubrey's Brief Lives: the word has no connection whatever with the Greek rachitis. I quote: " about 1620 one Ricketts of Newberye a Practictioner of Physick was excellent at the Curing Children with swoln heads, and small legges: and the Disease being new, and without a name, He being so famous for the cure of it, they called the Disease the Ricketts: as the King's Evill from the King's cureing of it with his Touch; and now 'tis good sport to see how they vex their Lexicons, and fetch it from the Greek PaXis, the back bone." See also Hypervitaminosis D References External links Skeletal disorders Vitamin D Vitamin deficiencies Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate