What is the English Disease?

“English disease,” better known as rickets, is due to a disorder of calcium and phosphate metabolism caused by vitamin D deficiency. Its name is based on its first discovery in the mid-16th century in Great Britain. However, “English disease” was widespread throughout Europe in the age of the Industrial Revolution, and the sufferers were primarily children.

Vitamin D deficiency as a cause

Driven by hunger and unemployment to the rapidly growing industrial cities, the poor rural population there hoped to improve their miserable living conditions. Their children, who grew up in the smokestack-polluted air of the cities and were later exploited almost around the clock as mine or factory workers, received little or no daylight or sunlight.

As a result of this, and also due to the permanent malnutrition, their organism was not able to produce the vital vitamin D, the precursor of which the body can synthesize itself and which is activated by UV radiation. Since only with the help of this vitamin, among other things, calcium, which is essential for growth in childhood, can be dissolved and transported into the bones, the visual clinical picture was symptomatic: bone softening, including of the skull bone, chicken breast, bow or knock knees and generally severe growth disorders. This acute calcium deficiency not infrequently led to death.

Rickets prophylaxis

Rickets prophylaxis is now a natural part of medical infant care. Because breast milk may not contain enough vitamin D3, babies often must receive supplemental and medically supervised vitamin D doses, usually in the form of droplets, from the second week of life through the first year. Overdoses can be dangerous!