Activity after recovery from rickets.

Abstract

Freud has postulated traumata of a psychosexual nature early in the life of the individual as a cause for neurotic or psychoneurotic disorders. This study was undertaken in order to ascertain other possible etiologic factors for such disorders. We wished to approach the problem from the standpoint of what damage might accrue to the psychobiologic makeup of the individual if early in his life cycle he had become conditioned by foods defective in certain elements: whether, for example, in addition to the skeletal deformities of rickets, there are sequellae in the nature of altered behavior. Behavior is such a broad term that the necessity for studying one aspect of it at a time became apparent. Since running is probably the main activity of the rat, it was decided to study chiefly this function in the white rat during and following rickets.Rickets was defined by Osier as "a disease of infants characterized by impaired nutrition of the entire body and alterations in the growing bones." Among the many features of the disease he mentions nervous symptoms such as irritability, peevishness, and sleeplessness. Because the disease can be produced easily in experimental animals by feeding a diet deficient in vitamin D, it has been possible to study many aspects of the acute phase of the disease, as well as certain after-effects.While numerous experiments have been designed to show the 1 Read before the Section on Nervous and Mental Diseases of the American Medical Association, Atlantic City, June 10 to 14,1935.

Spontaneous activity of animals; a review of the literature since 1929.

“…In a very suggestive paper Ziegler and Knudsen (124) showed that young white rats fed on a rachitic diet during infancy ran less after recovery from the rickets than normals. If, however, the rats were deprived of Vitamin D at an even earlier age by feeding the rachitic diet to their mothers during pregnancy, the surviving pups were more active after recovery than normals.…”