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Starved for Light: The Long Shadow of Rickets and Vitamin D Deficiency
A wide-ranging history of rickets tracks the disease’s emergence, evolution, and eventual treatment—and exposes the backstory behind contemporary worries about vitamin D deficiency.
Rickets, a childhood disorder that causes soft and misshapen bones, transformed from an ancient but infrequent threat to a common scourge during the Industrial Revolution. Factories, mills, and urban growth transformed the landscape. Malnutrition and insufficient exposure to sunlight led to severe cases of rickets across Europe and the United States, affecting children in a variety of dim British cities and American slave labor camps, moneyed households and impoverished ones. By the late 1800s, it was one of the most common pediatric diseases, seemingly an intractable consequence of modern life.
Starved for Light offers the first comprehensive history of this disorder. Tracing the efforts to understand, prevent, and treat rickets—first with the traditional remedy of cod liver oil, then with the application of a breakthrough corrective, industrially-produced vitamin D supplements—Christian Warren places the disease at the center of a riveting medical history, one alert to the ways society shapes our views on illness. Warren shows how physicians and public health advocates in the United States turned their attention to rickets among urban immigrants, both African Americans and southern Europeans; some concluded that the disease was linked to race, while others blamed poverty, sunless buildings and cities, or cultural preferences in diet and clothing. Spotlighting rickets’ role in a series of medical developments, Warren leads readers through the encroachment on midwifery by male obstetricians, the development of pediatric orthopedic devices and surgeries, early twentieth-century research into vitamin D, appalling clinical experiments on young children testing its potential, and the eventual commercialization of all manner of vitamin D supplements. As vitamin D consumption rose in the mid-twentieth century, rickets—previously a major concern for doctors, parents, and public health institutions—faded in its severity, frequency, and as a topic of discussion. But despite the availability of drugstore supplements and fortified milk, small numbers of cases still appear today, and concerns and controversies about vitamin D deficiency in general continue to grow.
Sweeping and engaging, Starved for Light illuminates the social conditions underpinning our cures and our choices, helping us to see history’s echoes in contemporary prescriptions.
Rickets, a childhood disorder that causes soft and misshapen bones, transformed from an ancient but infrequent threat to a common scourge during the Industrial Revolution. Factories, mills, and urban growth transformed the landscape. Malnutrition and insufficient exposure to sunlight led to severe cases of rickets across Europe and the United States, affecting children in a variety of dim British cities and American slave labor camps, moneyed households and impoverished ones. By the late 1800s, it was one of the most common pediatric diseases, seemingly an intractable consequence of modern life.
Starved for Light offers the first comprehensive history of this disorder. Tracing the efforts to understand, prevent, and treat rickets—first with the traditional remedy of cod liver oil, then with the application of a breakthrough corrective, industrially-produced vitamin D supplements—Christian Warren places the disease at the center of a riveting medical history, one alert to the ways society shapes our views on illness. Warren shows how physicians and public health advocates in the United States turned their attention to rickets among urban immigrants, both African Americans and southern Europeans; some concluded that the disease was linked to race, while others blamed poverty, sunless buildings and cities, or cultural preferences in diet and clothing. Spotlighting rickets’ role in a series of medical developments, Warren leads readers through the encroachment on midwifery by male obstetricians, the development of pediatric orthopedic devices and surgeries, early twentieth-century research into vitamin D, appalling clinical experiments on young children testing its potential, and the eventual commercialization of all manner of vitamin D supplements. As vitamin D consumption rose in the mid-twentieth century, rickets—previously a major concern for doctors, parents, and public health institutions—faded in its severity, frequency, and as a topic of discussion. But despite the availability of drugstore supplements and fortified milk, small numbers of cases still appear today, and concerns and controversies about vitamin D deficiency in general continue to grow.
Sweeping and engaging, Starved for Light illuminates the social conditions underpinning our cures and our choices, helping us to see history’s echoes in contemporary prescriptions.
- GenresNonfiction
288 pages, Hardcover
Published November 20, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 4, 2025
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Another historical exploration, this one into the plague of rickets and how we have fought to eradicate (although not entirely, as it seems to be making a small return for some less-than-obvious reasons).
It was interesting to hear the research than went into this affliction, which had been around for centuries due to dietary issues in some areas of the world but became very prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries as we became more and more industrialized and our cities grew more polluted, sunless, and crowded.
I take every opportunity at this stage in my life to absorb sunshine, and after reading this book, I will appreciate the sunny days of spring and summer even more. And I'll make sure to always take my Vitamin D.
Another historical exploration, this one into the plague of rickets and how we have fought to eradicate (although not entirely, as it seems to be making a small return for some less-than-obvious reasons).
It was interesting to hear the research than went into this affliction, which had been around for centuries due to dietary issues in some areas of the world but became very prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries as we became more and more industrialized and our cities grew more polluted, sunless, and crowded.
I take every opportunity at this stage in my life to absorb sunshine, and after reading this book, I will appreciate the sunny days of spring and summer even more. And I'll make sure to always take my Vitamin D.
May 12, 2025
I found this book interesting, I think mostly because I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to these types of books. I enjoyed the writing although some times I found my mind wandering. The history and the correlation to why humans have a Vitamin D deficiency was very fascinating. Let's just say after reading this I will choose not to take supplements but I'll get my Vitamin D from the sun and definitely not from cod liver oil or supplements.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews