ANTIRACHITIC POTENCY OF THE MILK OF COWS FED IRRADIATED YEAST OR ERGOSTEROL

Abstract

Although the incidence and severity of rickets in the United States has decreased in the course of the last five or ten years, it must not be thought that it has become a negligible disorder. A clinical survey of rickets which we carried out this winter among the poor who attend the child health stations showed that fully half of the white infants and approximately three fourths of the Negro infants have definite signs of rickets. If we confine our survey to the type of rickets that is demonstrable roentgenographically, these figures fall to about 15 per cent among the white and 30 per cent among the Negro infants. However, roentgenographic rickets must be regarded as rickets in the moderate stage, for mild rickets presents no evidence of alterations at the epiphyses. Rickets is perhaps the only disease in which embarrassment is occasioned by the very multiplicity of therapeutic agents.