This disease is engaging the attention of many workers on both sides of the Atlantic at the present time. In England the principal contributor is Dr. Mellanby, who has accumulated evidence which he believes indicates that the preventive factor is the A vitamine. This view is not yet accepted as conclusive by the American workers. McCollum, Howland, Park, and others at Johns Hopkins University have experimented with various rickets-producing diets and while the principal deficiency in these diets seems to be Ca salts and the A vitamine they do not consider that the disease can as yet be traced to deficiency in any one factor. Hess has called attention to several new features and the significance of some older measures. He has shown on the one hand that cod-liver oil is almost a specific remedy for the disease but that this remedy is not replaceable by other rich sources of the A vitamine. He has also recently shown that hygienic measures may have an influence. Schmorl showed that the disease was seasonal, a high rate maintaining in the winter months and a lower rate in the summer months. Hess has recently reported beneficial results from use of the ultra-violet rays which he uses as a substitute for sunlight. The results seem to confirm Schmorl's view that the sunlight of the summer months is a preventive factor. He has also suggested that the specific effect of the cod-liver oil might be due to a new vitamine, Vitamine D? On the other hand Zilva and Miura in England have recently shown that crude cod-liver oil is something like two hundred and fifty times as rich in vitamine A as butter fat, which tends to support the British view that the A vitamine is the antirachitic factor. Sherman and Pappenheimer have recently shown that the phosphates exert a marked preventive effect on rickets and suggest that the utilization of the calcium by the individual may be determined in part by this factor. The views in brief are now in an extremely chaotic state and it is impossible at present to determine whether rickets is a true avitaminose or a consequence of deficiency in a series of factors. It is however certain that the disease in its subacute forms is extremely wide-spread among infants and that its prevention can be most easily secured by the addition of cod-liver oil to the diet. In this procedure warning is necessary that the cod-liver oil be as pure a product of oil as possible, since the market preparations are often almost devoid of the true oil and hence of the curative agent. IV. PELLAGRA