The cause and treatment of rickets / by Norman Moore.

  • Sir Norman Moore, 1st Baronet
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cause and treatment of rickets / by Norman Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rickets. The passage quoted by Navier,* while giving its author no claim to a discovery, conclusively estab¬ lishes the existence of rickets before the seventeenth century. Dr. Theodosius, writing about 1540, says : “ The complaint is a weakness and inability to move, so that this child of seventeen months old can in no manner move itself, nor stand, and when it is carried in the nurse/s arms it can scarcely hold its head upright. Another symptom, the most cruel of all, is that three of the vertebrae of the true ribs bend outwardly and form a kind of hump-back, and the ribs appear to be arched in the manner of a bow.55 To sum up what records furnish against the hypo¬ thesis that rickets began in the seventeenth century. The presumption from the history of science is against it. Descriptions of symptoms more probably referable to this disease than to any other are to be found in older writers. I ought not to pass on without a short account of the books on Rickets since its first accurate description. The honour of its discovery belongs to Glisson, one of the long train of physicians who, passing out of Dr. Caius Gate of Honour, have done so much to place English medicine in its high position. Seven other physicians, among whom was a Dr. Paget, assisted Glisson in the observation of the disease, and by the discussion of the several propositions of a treatise f * Yan Swieten, vol. xvii., p. 347. t The earliest edition of this book is dated 1650. The preface implies that more than five years had been spent in the preparation of the work, and from the fact that seven physicians discussed the design and composition, it is obvious that Glisson’s observations must have been widely known for some time before the actual publication
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