General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Rickety Woo [View all]intaglio
(8,170 posts)Rickets is a deficiency disease of childhood caused by lack of vitamin D normally because the victim is not getting enough vitamin D from either sunlight or their diet. For adults (Jesuit missionaries) vitamin D deficiency would evidence as bone fragility and perhaps some anemia but would not be called "rickets". The general debility of a vitamin D deficiency would not be cured by a short course of vitamin D supplement. Additionally it would be highly unlikely they would suffer such extreme effects as long as their faces received an hour or two of daylight in every day and, like good Catholics of the time would, if they ate fish once a week.
What makes the story even more curious is that vitamin D is not soluble in water and is not denatured by boiling nor by contact with iron or copper utensils, so what gives?
Now, white pine bark does contain vitamin D and several other vitamins - notably vitamin C and in summer traveling Europeans were liable to scurvy but vitamin C becomes unstable in solution and is destroyed by boiling - so that is not the solution.
In continental America there used to be a common illness suffered by native Americans and colonists called "Rabbit Starvation". This illness is a vitamin E deficiency brought about by eating very low fat meats like rabbit as a staple. Unlike vitamin D, vitamin E is denatured by contact with iron or copper but there are two problems here (1) vitamin E is not water soluble and (2) native Americans were fully aware of the real cure - eating fat from virtually any animal other than rabbit.