The treatment of renal rickets

The condition now called renal rickets was first mentioned by Lucas (1883), and in the next twenty-eight years occasional cases were described. The close association between the kidney and the bony lesions was first clearly pointed out by Morley Fletcher (1911) in a communication to the Children's Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. Miller (1911), Parsons (1911), Parkes Weber (1912), Naish (1912), and Barber (1913) reported cases in the next year, and since then a large number of cases have been described in England, Canada, the United States and recently in France, Germany and Norway. The important papers by Barber (1920 Although so many papers have been written describing cases, many of which have ended fatally, little has been said about treatment either of the rickets or the kidney lesion. There is a general opinion that neither vitamin D nor ultra-violet light is of any value, and Park (1933) says that 'large amounts of vitamin D may produce calcification in the rachitic intermediate zone, but is useless because the D merely depletes the skeleton at one point in order to affect bone salt deposition at another, and is dangerous because it may lead to injury elsewhere' (metastatic calcification). Gyorgy (1928 Parsons (1927) and