Note 197 — PHARMACOLOGIA. ON THE OPERATIONS OF MEDICINAL BODIES, AND ON THE CLASSIFICATIONS FOUNDED ON THEM. (continued 2)

The urine of infants and nurses contains very little phosphate of lime and phosphoric acid; it is not until after ossification is finished, that these elements are found in abundance in the urinary fluid. That of old men, on the contrary, contains a great quantity of them; the bony system, already overcharged with phosphate of lime, refuses to admit more of it. This saline substance would ossify every part, as it does sometimes in the arteries, ligaments, cartilages, and membranes, if the urine were not to remove the greater part of this superabundant portion. In Rachitis it is by the urine that the phosphate of lime passes off, the absence of which causes the softness of bones. (Richerand). If we might be allowed to theorise, I should say, that this disease depends upon a deficient action in the powers of assimilation, in consequence of which the phosphoric acid is incapable of entering into its assigned combinations, and is therefore eliminated as excrementitious. Dr. Glisson considered the disease to depend upon some fault in the spinal marrow, whence he termed it Rachitis, from ῥακὶς Spina Dorsi.