e.

[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Skeleton of Rickety Dwarf, known as
"Bowed Joseph," leader of the Meal Riots in Edinburgh, who died in 1780.

(Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh.)]

These changes are well brought out in skiagrams; instead of the
well-defined narrow line which represents the epiphysial cartilage,
there is an ill-defined, blurred zone of considerable depth.

In the shafts of the long bones, owing to the excessive absorption of
bone, the cortex becomes porous, the spongy bone is rarefied, and the
bones readily bend or break under mechanical influences. When the
disease is arrested, a process of repair sets in which often results in
the bones becoming denser and heavier than normal. In the flat bones of
the skull, the absorption may result in the entire disappearance of
areas of bone, leaving a membrane which dimples like thin cardboard
under the pressure of the finger--a condition known as _craniotabes_.

_Changes in the Skeleton before the Child is able to walk._--The
fontanelles remain open until the end of the second year or longer, and
the frontal and parietal eminences are unduly prominent. There is
sometimes hydrocephalus, and the head is characteristically enlarged.
The jaws are altered so that while the upper jaw is contracted into the
shape of a #V#, the lower jaw is square instead of rounded in outline,
and the teeth do not oppose one another. In the _thorax_, the chief
feature may be the beading at the costo-chondral junctions, principally
of the fifth and sixth ribs or its walls may be contracted,
particularly if respiration is interfered with as a result of bronchial
catarrh or adenoids. The contraction may take the form of a vertical
groove on each side, or of a horizontal groove at the level of the upper
end of the xiphi-sternum; when the sternum and cartilages form a
projection in front, the deformity is known as "pigeon-breast."

The _spine_ may be curved backwards--_kyphosis_--throughout its
whole extent or only in one part; or it may be curved to one
side--_scoliosis_.

In the _limbs_, the prominent features are the deficient growth in
length of the long bones, the enlargements at the epiphysial junctions,
and the bending, and occasional greenstick fracture, of the shafts. The
degree of enlargement of the epiphysial junctions is directly
proportionate to the amount of movement to which the bone is subjected
(John Thomson). The curves at this stage depend on the attitude of t