HYGIENE OF FOOD AND FEEDING *i57 



A thorough cleaning of the teeth at frequent intervals thus 

 becomes necessary. The most reasonable time to clean the teeth 

 is immediately after each meal. If you get the habit of doing 

 this, it will postpone the rotting of the teeth a good many years. 

 Unfortunately business hours are so arranged that most grown- 

 ups cannot manage to look after their teeth after each meal. 

 The best time for brushing the teeth, if it can be done but once 

 a day, is just before retiring, that the bacteria may not continue 

 their destructive activities during sleep. 



The best cleaning material for the teeth— as for the skin or 

 for clothes — is a good white soap. If you buy a dollar's worth 

 of tooth paste or powder, you get several cents' worth of soap, 

 together with some cheap perfume and a little powder added to 

 scrub. The perfume does not help to keep the teeth clean, and 

 it has been questioned whether the abrasive or scrubbing powder 

 does not do more harm than good. If we begin with the younger 

 children, we shall find that they can quickly learn to use plain 

 soap on the toothbrush and do not need the fancy-smelling pink 

 addition to make toothbrushing an agreeable habit. 



In brushing the teeth the motion of the brush should be up 

 and down, so as to reach all the spaces. If you brush crossways, 

 the depressions along the edges of the teeth will not be reached 

 at all. In setting out to fix a toothbrush habit, it is well to re- 

 member that the back teeth and the inner faces of the teeth 

 need to be considered as w^ell as the fronts of the front teeth. 



133. Health habits. We have seen that we have no direct 

 control over the workings of the digestive system. We must 

 therefore establish habits at the few points where we have in- 

 direct control. The first point has to do with eating, and the 

 establishment of suitable eating habits should be our first con- 

 sideration. The second point at which we have control of the 

 digestive system is in the establishment of habits related to the 

 behavior of the large intestine. And, finally, there are certain 

 general habits of exercise and breathing and sleeping which, on 

 the one hand, are largely under our control and, on the other 

 hand, have an influence on the digestive system : 



