Chapattis and the English disease

An English medical student at Leyden University, Daniel Whistler, was the first to describe rickets in 1645. His brief pamphlet, perhaps based more on hearsay than direct observation, claimed it was a disease of English boys. Five years later Francis Glisson, a physician and regius professor of medicine at Cambridge, published his Treatise of the rickets and takes credit for the first full description of this disease.  

However, though claimed as a new disease by Glisson, its symptoms were described by ancient Chinese, classical Greek and Roman physicians. Nonetheless rickets, once rare, became increasingly common, particularly in the Black Country and Glasgow in the 1700s. By 1850 medical opinion variously blamed heredity, early weaning, improper diets, dirty skin, impure air, and a northern climate. While there was a grain of truth in some of these, how they caused rickets remained a mystery.