Rickets is a disease essentially due to improper food, but influenced by unsanitary surroundings, such as filth, bad air and water. It is due mainly to deficiency in mineral matter and develops in children who are fed on sugar, condensed milk, sterilized milk, fat, and starch foods, that contain but little or no mineral salts. The disease also occurs in children occasionally, whom their mothers nurse

- due to some deficiency in the mother's milk. Children who are permitted to eat fried foods, pickles, beer, green and over-ripe fruits, and indigestible foods generally, are subject to rickets.

There is frequently vomiting in the earlier symptoms of rickets, which indicates digestive disturbances.

Rickety children are listless and peevish when awake, and restless when asleep. The bones become soft, and if the child walks, it becomes deformed, twisted or bow-legged, and the spine may become curved. There may be emaciation, or the child may be fat or flabby. See diet for children.