A REVOLUTION IN DENTISTRY 49 



A EEVOLllION" IN DENTISTRY 



By RICHARD COLE NEWTON, M.D. 



HAVE the dentists waked up ? Some of them have. A new order 

 of the " Knights of the Eorceps " has been formed, called the 

 "Orthodontists" (tooth straighteners). At last accounts there were 

 sixty of them in America, as compared to 50,000 simple dentists. And 

 what does it all mean ? If I can compress a great deal of information 

 into a limited space I can, perhaps, explain it and I think that it may 

 be possible to make it clear why the movement is so important. 



Dr. Osier has said that the question of preserving the teeth is more 

 important than the liquor question. When one reflects that a great 

 deal of intemperance is caused by dyspepsia, with its mental and phys- 

 ical deterioration, and that the underlying cause of much of the gen- 

 erally prevalent dyspepsia is the decayed and defective teeth, which 

 preclude complete mastication of the food (even if anybody in America 

 had the time to eat properly), the solid truth of Dr. Osier's remark 

 begins to dawn upon us. 



Now the dentists, like the doctors, have begun to realize that their 

 true mission is not " a general repairing business," but a systematic and 

 well-considered effort to prevent and forestall the wholesale decay and 

 loss of human teeth. Perhaps some idea of the very general use of 

 false teeth may be gathered from the statement that 20,000,000 of them 

 are exported from America to England every year. When we consider 

 that probably not more than half of the inhabitants of that country 

 indulge in the luxury of false teeth, no matter how many " grinders " 

 they may have lost, these figures would seem to indicate that nearly 

 every one in England suffers from defective or missing teeth. Observa- 

 tions so far as they have been carried in the United States show the 

 same deplorable state of affairs. 



A great many more or less ingenious explanations have been ad- 

 vanced from time to time, to account for this, as well as for the fact 

 that so few Americans have regularly disposed teeth and well-shaped 

 jaws. Our English friends have made much sport of our " hatchet 

 faces," " lantern jaws " and the nasal tones of our voices. We are told 

 that such an admixture of races, as is gradually taking place in our 

 country, is the cause of our poor teeth. Nobody seems to know why it 

 should be so. In fact, such a result is directly opposite to nature's 

 beneficent course in admixtures of different races and species, where 

 vol. lxxv. — 4. 



