Presence and Absence: An Exploration of Scurvy in the Commingled Subadults in the Spring Street Presbyterian Church Collection,Lower Manhattan

This paper presents the results of an examination of scurvy in the commingled subadult remains (minimum number of individuals = 70) of the Spring Street Presbyterian Church. This historic congregation in New York City had active burial vaults from 1820 to 1846. Scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency that results in haemorrhaging at the sites of muscle origin and insertion, particularly around the skull. These resulting lesions can occur in subadults undergoing growth, weaning and dietary stress. Applying diagnoses suggested by recent research, this article examines specific sites on the skull for lesions consistent with and suggestive of scurvy. Findings include 30 elements that display associated pathology. This population data are drawn from maxillae, sphenoids and orbits. Two osteobiographies are also presented. By connecting the biological data to the socio‐cultural environment of the church, this article raises questions of how to interpret the presence and absence of scurvy in a commingled collection. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rickets and child abuse: the case of a two year old girl from the 4th century in Lisieux (Normandy)

The burial of a child of two years of age from the 4^th century site of Lisieux‐Michelet (Calvados, France) was examined for bone hyperplasia and a variety of mechanical deformations recognized in association with skeletal trauma. Results of DNA analysis of bone using the PCR method identified this child as female. Microscopic features of the teeth (interglobular dentine) and a sample taken from the tibia conclusively determined that this child suffered from vitamin D‐resistant rickets and possibly X‐linked hypophosphataemic rickets as its most common form of occurrence. In addition, evidence for child abuse is suspected based on the presence of cranial and tooth fractures and the appearance of successive plaque‐like endocranial (meningeal) appositions. This is the first palaeopathological report of child abuse in antiquity. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Osteometric scoring of adult residual rickets skeletal plasticity in two archaeological populations from southeastern England: Relationship to sunshine and calcium deficits and demographic stress

An osteometric scoring technique is developed for the quantification of rickets deformational effects persisting in the healed adult skeleton. Termed RR-15 scoring (for residual rickets estimate, based on 15 main diagnostic osteometric traits), the method is first validated for sunshine deficit, and is then tested in a comparison of three climatically distinct archaeological populations from southeastern England. Two well-dated cemetery series were sampled: the Saint Bride's Church columbarium collection (SBC) from London at the time of the Industrial Revolution, for which the sex, age, and calender year at death of each individual are known; and the early Anglo-Saxons from Abingdon, near Oxford (AAS). Estimates of insolation in the past were developed indirectly by reference to δ¹⁸O mass spectrometer analyses of dated layers of the Greenland ice sheet. In SBC and AAS, the RR-15 score varies primarily as a direct function of computed sunshine deficit, but is also incremented by deficits of bioavailable calcium in their reconstructed diets, and by demographic stress in AAS, the inferred result of a high birth rate. The amounts of interglobular dentine present in the permanent first and third molar crowns of SBC and AAS have been shown to correlate similarly with sunshine and calcium deficits. The relatively high RR-15 score obtained in a small sample of northwestern European neanderthals lends quantitative support to the bioenvironmental hypothesis that sunshine-deficit rickets accounts for much of their paranormal gross morphology.     

Dry-bone manifestations of rickets in infancy and early childhood

Rickets and osteomalacia are the subadult and adult expressions of a disease in which the underlying problem is a failure to mineralize bone protein (osteoid). The most common cause of this disease is a physiological deficiency in vitamin D. The associated problems include deformed bones and this condition is well known in pre-modern medical texts and documents as a fairly common cause of morbidity. Given these facts, it is surprising that the literature on palaeopathology provides very little evidence of this disease in archaeological human skeletal samples. The medieval sample (N=687) of human remains from Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, England contains a remarkable subsample of eight burials in which a spectrum of pathological features is expressed. The subsample includes infants ranging in age from 3 to 18 months at the time of death. Ten abnormal bone features were identified in the subsample, including: (i) cranial vault porosity; (ii) orbital roof porosity; (iii) deformation of the mandibular ramus; (iv) deformation of arm bones; (v) deformation of leg bones; (vi) flared costo-chondral ends of ribs; (vii) irregular and porous cortex of the costo-chondral ends of the ribs; (viii) abnormality of the growth plates of long bones; (ix) irregular and porous surfaces of the metaphyseal cortex; (x) thickening of the long bones, particularly in the metaphyseal areas. Not all of these features were found in all of the cases. Nevertheless, the overall pattern of skeletal abnormality fits well with the anatomical and radiological conditions associated with rickets. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pathological Evidence in Newborn Children from the Sixteenth Century in Huelva (Spain)

Archaeological infant remains rarely appear in the palaeopathological literature; above all there are few references to neonatal individuals. This work presents four infant pathological specimens from the crypt of the Ermita de la Soledad (sixteenth to nineteenth century, Huelva, Spain). The bones analysed—one right hemifrontal, two humeri and a femur—belong to at least two individuals of between 0 and 6 months of age. The differential diagnosis of the lesions—mainly detachments of the outer layer of cortical bone, areas of juxtametaphysial osteolysis and epiphysial destructuralization—supports the hypothesis of an infectious aetiology, such as congenital treponematosis and haematogenous osteomyelitis, although illness caused by a deficiency, such as scurvy or rickets, cannot be ruled out.     

Residual rickets or osteomalacia: a case dating from the 16–18th centuries from Krosno Odrzańskie,Poland

A skeleton from a 16–18^th century burial site in Krosno Odrzańskie, Poland, was examined using classical morphological, metric and macroscopic palaeopathological observations, as well as radiography and tomography of the skull and long bones. A wide variety of the observed bone deformations probably occurred as a consequence of past rickets and/or osteomalacia, whose primary cause may also have been chronic renal failure. Preservation of the bones enables a discussion of the cause of such pathological changes. The subject under study appears to be a very interesting example of an individual whose skeleton shows advanced pathological alterations associated with the subject's vitamin D deficiency, overall health conditions and relatively long lifespan. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.