14 DAY TRIAL // The Medicis were highly influential figures during the time of the Italian Renaissance, but as rich and as privileged as the kids born in this family were, they still got sick.
Ironically enough, specialists say that the Medici kids got sick because of their privileged upbringing.
By analyzing the skeletons of nine Medici children, researchers found that they all had a severe vitamin D deficiency, otherwise known as rickets.
Nature reports that, all things considered, the kids ended up suffering with rickets because they spent too much time indoors.
Thus, their bodies never got the change to produce vitamin D simply because they didn't get enough exposure to sunlight.
“Poor children were living in small houses, and they were running around outside, but elite parents wouldn’t have wanted their children to have tans, because that would suggest they had to go outside,” anthropologist Mary Lewis explains.
This condition caused the Medici kids to develop curved arm and leg bones. One of the children, Filippino, seems to have also had a slightly deformed skull.