Childhood rickets, the impact of socio-economic status in Early Modern Europe

Abstract :  Rickets is a disease caused  by vitamin D deficiency  in children and is well known in our modern times. lt has been only a few decades since rickets  has been  studied  in an archaeological context. This study looks at the impact of socio-economic status on the prevalence of rickets in children.

One may think that rickets, as a vitamin deficiency disease, would affect individuals of low social status more. However, it seems that in the 16^th and 17^th century this was not the case. ln fact, the cultural treatment of children of higher social status would have caused more rickets at that time [1]. ln the 19^th century the industrial revolution changed that balance: the prevalence  of rickets  in the higher social classes decreased, increasing instead in the lower social classes.

Throughout  the 19th century, famine, changes in the way of working and other factors  impacted the lower social classes. This change is visible in archaeological sites such as the Beemster rural farming community in the Netherlands [2, 3]. However, the causes of vitamin D deficiency and so, of rickets, are multiple. lt should be taken into accounts. Diet, geographical region, and culture, all have an impact at different levels [3].

Moreover, only a few databases have been created to document rickets in different archaeological sites, so the results of these studies will likely evolve in the future. Besides rickets is mainly diagnosed by the bowing of long bones (femur, tibia, fibula). This symptom is not enough in fact, many skeletons are not in good preservation condition and so those  signs  are not visible.  During  the last few years several studies [4, 5] have looked at a new methodological approach for the diagnosis of rickets based on interglobular  dentine or IGD. These studies will be essential in the future to better diagnose rickets, in cases where the bones are not in good shape or if no macroscopic signs are visible. And the research of non-invasive techniques [5] will also permit the study of bone collections of museums, to create an ever-larger database and improve our understanding of how rickets affected people in the past.