Mellanby, Edward (1884–1955)

English pharmacologist who discovered that rickets (disease characterized by the softening of the bones) is the result of a vitamin deficiency.

In 1918 Mellanby produced puppies with rickets by feeding them a diet which was deficient in a compound found in animal fats. While it had been commonly held until 1900 that rickets was a chronic infectious disease, others had proposed before Mellanby that it was caused by poor living conditions (lack of fresh air, sunlight, and exercise).

Mellanby demonstrated conclusively by his experiments that rickets was the result of a vitamin deficiency and could be cured with cod-liver oil. In 1919, Kurt Huldschinsky in Berlin, demonstrated that rickets could also be cured by artificial sunlight.

Mellanby was born in Hartlepool and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital in London before taking the chair of physiology at King's College for Women (now Queen Elizabeth College), London 1913–20. He then moved to the chair of pharmacology at the University of Sheffield.