UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 257 
this question a great deal of experimental and clinical 
attention report that it takes about six months for a case 
of infantile scurvy to develop to a point where it may be 
clinically recognized, and further that profound changes 
may take place in certain structures, especially the teeth, 
before the ordinary symptoms of scurvy appear. 
From such experiments it is found that the teeth are 
one of the first if not the first structure to be affected by 
lack of water-soluble C in the diet. Even when scurvy 
symptoms are so slight as to be almost unrecognizable very 
profound and detrimental changes were found to have 
taken place in the teeth. A degeneration develops in the 
growing bone cells at the base of the pulp of the teeth, 
and may result in a complete replacement of the fine cel- 
lular structure of the pulp of the normal tooth by a fibrous 
growth devoid of cells and nuclei. The growth and 
composition of the protective enamel is also materially 
interfered with. Conditions very closely resembling 
pyorrhea in its various stages have been observed in lab- 
oratory animals on a scorbutic diet. 
These results were obtained by experimentation on 
- guinea pigs and monkeys, but are felt to apply almost 
wholly to human beings as well, especially as apparently 
identical conditions have been observed and described 
in human teeth. 
Dental writings have many times recorded the fact 
that the teeth of primative races are not subject to decay 
to the same extent found under conditions of more highly 
developed civilization. For example one study reports 
that 68 per cent of the children of one of the tribes of the 
Philippines had perfect teeth. In the other 32 per cent 
the abnormalities were so slight as to escape entirely the 
notice of the layman. The Scottish Highlanders are re- 
ported practically free from tooth decay, while the con- 
dition of the teeth of the Lowlanders is extremely poor. 
These differences are ascribed to the simple diet of 
natural foods in the one case and to the more highly 
refined nature of the foods composing the diet in the other. 
Jt has been rather commonly observed by dentists that 
Swedish girls who came to this country as domestics have 
excellent teeth upon their arrival, but that our American 
