Dental caries : a crital summary; and the prevention of dental caries / by Henry Sewill.

  • Sewill, Henry.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dental caries : a crital summary; and the prevention of dental caries / by Henry Sewill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    sical comfort implies comparative disuse of teeth and jaws. The advance of the art of cooking, together with flour refining and soft bread making, renders all food so comparatively soft that it calls for little chewing. Disuse of the organs of mastication leads in time to their wasting; characteristics of parents are transmitted as hereditary characters to their progeny, until at length a de- terioration commenced in one individual becomes a family defect, and, finally, a generation is produced in which the whole appara- tus of mastication—teeth, muscles and maxillae—is inferior. Evi- dence of the influence of heredity on dental development appears daily before every practitioner. Children’s jaws and teeth com- monly resemble those of one or other parent. Abnormalities such as “ underhung jaw,” the absence of a particular tooth, or the malplacement of one of the set, frequently run through a whole family. The occurrence of visible patches of defective enamel or the onset of caries in corresponding teeth are not less frequently encountered family traits. This slight digression leads me to the next predisposing cause of caries, namely crowding and irregularity of the teeth—due to small- ness and malformation of the maxillae. Whilst it is the exception to find an individual of a civilised race with dental tissues perfect in structure, it is, as I have just suggested, equally uncommon to find one with perfectly formed jaws. In a well-formed jaw every tooth is subjected to the constant beneficial friction of the tongue and of food, during mastication ; whilst all the dental sur- faces are in health constantly washed by alkaline saliva. These conditions render impossible the prolonged lodgment of decom- posing acid-forming products about the teeth, and so do away with one potent factor in the causation of caries. But it is the exception to meet with a case in which at least some crowding of teeth does not exist—most often, now-a-days there is, at least, no room for the wisdom teeth, and one or other of the set more or less overlaps its neighbours. Between such a slight case all degrees of crowding and irregularity are to be observed up to the extreme instances of small Y-shaped maxillae where the teeth are found leaning at all angles, wedged together in what looks like one confused mass. It is easy to understand how such condi- tions of crowding and irregularity make certain the accumulation of decomposing foreign particles in the unnaturally narrow inter- stices between the teeth, and in the nooks and crannies formed by the irregularity. And the fact upon which I wish specially