Ethnographic odontology : the Inca Peruvians / by A.H. Thompson.

  • Thompson, A. H.
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    ETHNOGRAPHIC ODONTOLOGY; THE INCA PERUVIANS. It is not my purpose to tax your patience by making any ex- tended apology or giving any explanation of the general value of the study of the ethnology of the teeth. That has been done else- where. Suffice it to say now briefly that my studies in comparative odontology have naturally led up to the subject of the comparative study of the teeth of the various races of mankind, with the object of differentiating the characteristic ethnic features. I have been greatly disappointed that the literature of the subject, in which I hoped to find data from which to form deductions, was not only very meager, but that what little has been written upon the ethnologic characters of the teeth is of little value, owing to the want of exact observations of the minute anatomical features of the teeth, which we, as dentists, are accustomed to observing in prac- tice. I shall not attempt to discuss what has been written upon the general subject at this time, but confine myself to the presenta- tion of some original work that I have attempted in one small field, and which is intended to be more suggestive than exhaustive. I shall not even try to present an analysis of what I have been able to glean from this field, but undertake the description only of what [ have observed. We are not yet in possession of the data to make any generalizations or deductions in any field of dental ethnology, so that our first duty is the accumulation of facts and their classi- fication. That is what I shall attempt in this paper—the presentation 3 ’iil