In 1921, it was discovered that 75 percent of all infants in New York had rickets, a disease that causes bone deformities. The high percentage of children all over the world afflicted with this crippling disease would soon decline sharply, thanks to Elmer V. McCollum. On this date in 1922, McCollum, the first professor and chair of the Biochemistry Department at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, reported what he found to be the cause of the disease: a lack of a vitamin he co-discovered and named - vitamin D. Because fish oils are a high source of vitamin D, a daily spoonful of cod liver oil was found to be one of the best treatments. Though rickets has largely disappeared from developed nations, it is still found in India, Africa and other developing nations.

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