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Show CAPITALIZING GOOD TEETH The county fair was only one week off. The Dutchess County Health As sociation had had a most successful original health exhibit the year before, be-fore, and everybody seemed to think we could do it again. Another perusal peru-sal of the Routzahn's book on "The ABC of Exhibit Planning," reminded us that to have a successful exhibit one must resist the temptation to tell all one knows and must simply get a single idea over. The idea should be worth, getting over and should lead the spectator to realize the importance im-portance of some difinite line of the work. One of the activities of the Dutchess Dut-chess county Health Association at the moment was an effort to obtain a traveling dental clinic for the county. coun-ty. Evidently a dental exhibit was needed but what more stupid than posters and models of teeth, or than pictures and price lists of traveling dental clinics? With the fair only four days off, our idea suddenly came and from Philadelphia! "Oh, give each kid who has his teeth in good condition a dollar,' dol-lar,' said the Chief Medical Inspec-, tor of schools, of that town. Telegrams elicited the information that a dental house in Brooklyn would lend us dental apparatus free of charge if we would come after it. A nurse in her Ford was dispatched posthaste, her presence on Fifth Avenue Av-enue with her muddy Lizzy piled high with dental chair, cabinet, foot-engine, glass shelved table, etc., causing caus-ing rather scornful smiles but no srarioits disturbance. Two Dutchess County millionaires with Sporting blood' backed the en-'erprise, en-'erprise, financially, though we had uu way ul leiuug now many ooiars night be needed to make our offer rood; seven dentists promised to give' several hours of their time to examine the teeth of the children at the fair. Then came the question of what one meant by "teeth in good condition," condi-tion," and the whole place was shaken shak-en to its foundation, as no two dentists den-tists could agree on this point; their discussions grew so detailed that we were really lost ina maze of dental den-tal 'trems and technicalities. We feared fear-ed that we did not dare demand per-pect per-pect teeth in case we should not find any. After all, we wanted to reward re-ward the children who had done the best possible, who had Itept their leeth clean and had had all the cavities ca-vities filled. We wanted to prove to mhelievers that the mouths of most "hildren are in need of dental attention. atten-tion. Hence we declared that' teeth in good condition" should mean "teeth clean and- with no cavities." The day of the fair ame. Our tent was decorated on the outside with -normous painted cardboard toothbrushes tooth-brushes and with a sign offering a dollar to any child between the ages "f five and sixteen whose teeth were in good condition. Inside the tent, a hite-coated dentist and a uniformed, uniform-ed, nurse stood beside the dental chair. The crowds began' to come to the fair, but nobody came into tho tent! "They'll never give you no dolar." was muttered sentiment of passing children. Finding that the foot-engine grought terror to little hearts, we hid that implement of torture V.'e left the tnt jans alw-ays open -'"d we canfured n Vassar girl for a barker. She urged the children In. and. fortunately for ns. the third one to arrive had clean teeth and Vps two or three ca.vities filled, so that we could give him a dollar. The barber shouted this news, and a crow-rl collected col-lected around no and from then on we were kept hnsv. In the meantime the first little dollar hoy r-'urned lo-uliTig five or six other small boys to try for the prize. The second day a small boy was waylaid hy the nurse's protect r.f "Look here, you were examined vns-ferday." vns-ferday." To which he calmlv returned. return-ed. "Yes. hut TV" been to the denflsf and bad mv teth rica"eri s--r,.--, ti-or' We thnncht he dwrrM tho dollar' Several such rntorTirU'ns infants rt to their d-nM-- n l----e c-c-r tee:!i cleancl or ,.,.;,( fpc-r and r-"rned for the c'ellar. -!: 'lr. 'his showed an un-and-crn--r sn-if '' i''e future citizens f Dutchess ( o ir-ty. One little girl received a dollar and returned in tin afienuoi. with her sister, who was i?fused because her teeth were not clean. This tragedy trag-edy reduced sister to noisy tears. Later their mother took the trouble to come in and thank us for the lesson les-son we had taught her youngest. The child would not brushy her teeth and ' t:he hd learned in a never-to-be-forgotten way that brushing teeth is a 1 habit not to be despised and that her mother was right. Near our tent, a nurse dressed as a clown weighed, and measured the children. Occasionally, when business was not good though this was seldom, sel-dom, as she weighed 800 children during the fair she would attract attention to our tent by pretending to brush her teeth with our big card board toothbrushes, or by similar antics. Once our barker grew weary and her confused mind wandered between be-tween the weighing and the teeth examination, with the startling result re-sult that she suddenly began " to shout, "Come in and have your teeth weighed!" The indignant expressions express-ions on the faces of the crowd and an immediate thinning out of our clients finally made her realize that something was amiss, and she hastily hasti-ly changed her refrain. ' A dollar represented a good deal of money to some youngsters. One child had to be dragged forcibly past our tent again and again. "But mother, mo-ther, I might get it this time,' she wailed. But, alas! years of neglect ftid left her teeth in such condition that no hurried call on a dentist could have mads her eligible for the coveted prize. In the four days of the fair, the teeth of 490 children wrere examined ana i4 dollar inns handed out. That meant that out of every six children only one had teeth which were clean and not' in need of immediate dental attention. Add o this the fact that many children did not come in for examination, because they knew they had cavities in their teeth, and you may realize what a serious situation confronts the country, especially the rural districts, as our children were indicative of the situation everywhere. every-where. Consider the enormous variety vari-ety of bodily ills which may originate origi-nate in poor teeth. If, at the least estimate, every child in six needs dental work, something should be done quickly. The cure seems to be first, education causing a demand for proper care, and second I ho facilities for such care. As a step toward th's latter cure, the traveling dental cUnic has been successful in several places. This consists of a truck containing movable mov-able equipment, which goes to the most inaccessible parts of the country. coun-try. The dentist and the nurse who are in attendance put up the apparatus appara-tus in some corner of the school-house school-house and there attend to the children's chil-dren's teeth (always with the consent con-sent of the parents.) The American 1 City. |