Rickets and the Fairfax Family Receipt Books

100 YEARS OF VITAMIN D: Historical aspects of vitamin D

Vitamin D has many physiological functions including upregulation of intestinal calcium and phosphate absorption, mobilization of bone resorption, renal reabsorption of calcium as well as actions on a variety of pleiotropic functions. It is believed that many of the hormonal effects of vitamin D involve a 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-vitamin D receptor-mediated transcriptional mechanism involving binding to the cellular chromatin and regulating hundreds of genes in many tissues. This comprehensive historical review provides a unique perspective of the many steps of the discovery of vitamin D and its deficiency disease, rickets, stretching from 1650 until the present. The overview is divided into four distinct historical phases which cover the major developments in the field and in the process highlighting the: (a) first recognition of rickets or vitamin D deficiency; (b) discovery of the nutritional factor, vitamin D and its chemical structure; (c) elucidation of vitamin D metabolites including the hormonal form, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3; (d) delineation of the vitamin D cellular machinery, functions and vitamin D-related diseases which focused on understanding the mechanism of action of vitamin D in its many target cells.

The discovery and synthesis of the nutritional factor vitamin D

Although vitamin D deficiency was first recognized as rickets/osteomalacia in the early 1600s, it was only a century ago that vitamin D, the nutritional factor responsible, was discovered. This discovery was made difficult by the fact that the substance could be synthesized in human skin by exposure to UV light and could also be present in the diet in animal-derived (D₃) and plant-derived forms (D₂). Prior to 1920, the frequency of vitamin D deficiency in the general population of industrialized cities was high. The discovery of vitamin D led to the widespread fortification of foods e.g. milk and the virtual eradication of rickets in developed nations. Vitamin D₃ was first chemically synthesized in the 1930s and its metabolism to the active form 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D₃ and its mode of action in calcium and phosphate homeostasis were elucidated in the latter half of the 20th century. Synthetic vitamin D analogs that mimic the physiological effects of vitamin D are now used therapeutically in diseases such as bone disease, chronic kidney disease and psoriasis. Thus, a wide range of disciplines played critical roles in the rich history of vitamin D and these are described in this short historical overview.

'A matter of so great importance to my health': Alimentary knowledge in practice

The early modern period persists in being the neglected era for concerted study of what the editors have called 'alimentary knowledge' and its applications. Using the details of a regimen penned by a Sussex school teacher in the middle of the eighteenth century, this short afterword considers how far some of the features of that alimentary knowledge-scape, as debated by the contributors to this volume, penetrated into quotidian practice. The possibilities for other forms of research, which might enrich our mapping of these foodways and their impacts, are briefly discussed in conclusion.