The Physical Training of Children

by Pye Henry Chavasse

Rickets is owing to a want of a sufficient quantity of earthy matter in the bones; hence the bones bend and twist, and lose their shape, causing deformity. Rickets generally begins to show itself between the first and second years of a child’s life. Such children are generally late in cutting their teeth, and when the teeth do come, they are bad, deficient of enamel, discolored, and readily decay. A rickety child is generally stunted in stature; he has a large head, with overhanging forehead, or what nurses call a watery-head-shaped forehead. The fontanelles, or openings of the head as they are called, are a long time in closing. A rickety child is usually talented; his brain seems to thrive at the expense of his general health. His breast-bone projects out, and the sides of his chest are flattened—hence he becomes what is called chicken-breasted or pigeon-breasted; his spine is usually twisted, so that he is quite awry, and, in a bad case, he is hump-backed; the ribs, from the twisted spine, on one side bulge out; he is round-shouldered; the long bones of his body, being soft, bend; he is bow-legged, knock-kneed, and weak ankled.

Rickets are of various degrees of intensity, the hump-backed being among the worst. There are many mild forms of rickets; weak ankles, knocked-knees, bowed-legs, chicken-breasts, being among the latter number. Many a child, who is not exactly hump-backed, is very round-shouldered, which latter is also a mild species of rickets.

Show me a child that is rickety, and I can generally prove that it is owing to poor living, more especially to poor milk. If milk were always genuine, and if a child had an abundance of it, my belief is that rickets would be a very rare disease. The importance of genuine milk is of national importance. We cannot have a race of strong men and women unless, as children, they have had a good and plentiful supply of milk. It is utterly impossible. Milk might well be considered one of the necessaries of a child’s existence.

Genuine fresh milk, then, is one of the grand preventives, as well as one of the best remedies, for rickets. Many a child would not now have to swallow quantities of cod-liver oil if previously he had imbibed quantities of good genuine milk. An insufficient and a poor supply of milk in childhood sows the seeds of many diseases, and death often gathers the fruit. Can it be wondered at, when there is so much poor and nasty milk in England, that rickets in one shape or another is so prevalent?

When will mothers arouse from their slumbers, rub their eyes, and see clearly the importance of the subject? When will they know that all the symptoms of rickets I have just enumerated usually proceed from the want of nourishment, more especially from the want of genuine and of an abundance of milk? There are, of course, other means of warding off rickets besides an abundance of nourishing food, such as thorough ablution, plenty of air, exercise, play, and sunshine; but of all these splendid remedies, nourishment stands at the top of the list.

I do not mean to say that rickets always proceeds from poorness of living—from poor milk. It sometimes arises from scrofula, and is an inheritance of one or of both the parents.

Rickety children, if not both carefully watched and managed, frequently, when they become youths, die of consumption. A mother, who has for some time neglected the advice I have just given, will often find, to her grievous cost, that the mischief has, past remedy, been done, and that it is now “too late!—too late!”

271. How may a child be prevented from becoming Rickety? or, if he be Rickety, how ought he to be treated?

If a child be predisposed to be rickety, or if he be actually rickety, attend to the following rules:

Let him live well, on good nourishing diet, such as on tender rump-steaks, cut very fine, and mixed with mashed potatoes, crumb of bread, and with the gravy of the meat. Let him have, as I have before advised, an abundance of good new milk—a quart or three pints during every twenty-four hours. Let him have milk in every form—as milk gruel, Du Barry’s Arabica revalenta made with milk, batter and rice puddings, suet-pudding, bread and milk, etc.