Calcium and Phosphorus Requirements for Growing Chicks : I. Studies With Salt Mixtures Under Rachitic Conditions

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It is well known that vitamin D or its equivalent, ultraviolet rays, has a corrective effect on the assimilation of calcium and phosphorus from rations with unfavorable mineral combinations. In other words, vitamin D masks the true biological action of the minerals as such. Therefore, to study the true mineral value of the diet, it is necessary to conduct experiments in the absence of this influencing factor.Shipley and co-workers1 demonstrated that rickets can be produced by either low calcium diets or low phosphorus diets. Sherman and Pappenheimer2 showed that rickets could be produced in rats by a diet low in phosphorus and that it could be prevented simply by increasing the phosphorus and decreasing the calcium content of the diet.In 1924 Goldblatt3 showed that when the calcium-phosphorus ratio was 1:0.8, rickets was only very slightly evident in rats fed a purified ration containing no vitamin D. However, in .