Supplementary essays on the cause and prevention of dental caries / by J. Sim Wallace.

  • Wallace, J. Sim (James Sim), 1869-1951.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Supplementary essays on the cause and prevention of dental caries / by J. Sim Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    firniation of the theory that 'the cause of the prevalence of dental caries is that the natural food-stuffs (of the civilised) are, to a large extent, ridded of their accompany- ing fibrous parts, and prepared and consumed in a manner which renders them liable to lodge and undergo acid fermentation in the mouth, etc. Several other letters on this subject appeared in the Lancet, but I shall only allude to Dr. T. G. Read's views, which, in the form they now take, appear to support my contention that the prevalence of dental caries is due to the fact that food is prepared ... in a manner which renders it liable to . . . undergo acid fermentation in the mouth.'' It may be well now to refer to certain observations which appear to have largely misdirected the attention of observers on this subject. Dr. Miller says : The structure of the teeth plays the most important part as a predisposing cause of dental caries. Poorly developed, soft, porous teeth, with many large interglobular spaces, are highly predisposed to caries. As a lump of table salt dissolves more rapidly in water on account of its porosity than an equally large piece of rock salt, porous dentine is more rapidly decalcified than well developed, firm dentine, because the acid may the more readily penetrate the tissue, and because less acid is required to decalcify a porous than a hard tooth.* I disagree with Dr. Miller, more especially in his inter pretation of the causes of the structural defects and * Miller, Micro-organisms of the Human Moutli/' p. 21(5.