168 COGSWELL — ON THE HUMAN TEETH. 



accumulation. 'No better example need be given than in examining 

 the mouth of any one who from diseased organs on one side of the 

 mouth, use only the opposite, allowing the teeth not used to become 

 frequently entirely encrusted and covered with this substance. 

 Among the vegetarians of Japan it is said this disease is very 

 marked, as the food they chiefly subsist on is rice, beans, sweet 

 potatoes ; but since foreigners have resided there the natives eat 

 meat. In the streets of the capital, there are numerous stands 

 kept by the wayside merchants, who supply the passers by 

 with this new foreign notion called beef-stew. Dr. Elliott, who 

 resides there, states that it is rare to find an elderly person with 

 teeth, and as for the daughters of Japan the practice and 

 horrible custom of blacking the teeth, after marriage, destroys 

 their beauty. 



In the study of the pathological condition of the teeth, we are 

 also to discover if possible, wherein the harmony of demand and 

 supply has been interfered with, causing a premature loss of these 

 organs. In a healthy and normal condition of the human system, 

 we find if proper food be taken into the system, the teeth will not 

 only be perfectly formed, but healthily preserved, provided ordinary 

 care and cleanliness be exercised. 



Cleanliness cannot be too largely written in letters of gold, not 

 only to the young, but to those of all ages. For in the carnivora 

 we discover that not only the foul mucous covering of the tongue, 

 but the tartar cf the teeth, consists of the dead remains of millions 

 of infusorial aniriialculae. Leuenhoek lono^ ao^o discovered this foul 

 mucous, while Mandel made known the chemical decomposition 

 found in the human mouth, so called tartar. By dissolving a 

 portion of this in water and placing it under a microscope, the 

 delicate scales are observable. 



If these organs which the Creator has given to all, so useful and 

 necessary, and which should be as hard as adamant, ard'so readily 

 and frequently lost, is there not something radically wrong in the 

 present system of living, and the want of the proper care of the 

 teeth? 



It is most especially deplorable among the females of this coun- 

 try, and in fact continent, that descendants of European parents, 



