Show Hygiene of the Teeth A hard crust is th3 beat possible dentifrioe I never could get myaeli f ta believe in the natural necessity of a toothbrush The African nations the Hindoos the native of Southern Europe the SouthSea Islanders the Arabs the South American vegetarians vegetari-ans in short threefourths of our fellowmen besides our next relatives the frugivercua animals have splendid splen-did teeth without sozodont I really believe that ours decay from sheer disuse the boardinghouse homo lives chiefly on papwants all his meats softbciled and growlJ at cold biscuit or an underdone potato in other words he delegates to ths cook the proper functions of his teeth We hear occasionally of old men getting a second or rather third set of teeth I met one of them in northern Guatemala Gua-temala and Ascertained that he had become toothless during a twelve years sojourn in a seaport town and that he got his new set upon his return re-turn to his native village where circumstances cir-cumstances obliged him to resume the hard corncake diet of his boyhood boy-hood years His teeth had reappeared reap-peared as soon as their services were called for and would probably never have absented themselves if a pap diet had not made them superfluous An artificial l dentifrioe will certainly keep the teeth white but that does not prevent their premature decay disuse gradually softens their substance stance til one fine day the bashsater snaps his best incisor upon an unexpected un-expected piece of bone Every old dentist knows hundreds of city customers custo-mers whom the daily use of a toothbrush tooth-brush did not save from the necessity of applying before the end of the fortieth year for a complete celluloid cellu-loid set I do not say that a soft toothbrush and such dentifrices as oatmeal or burned arrowroot can do any harm but forsanitary purposes such precautions must be supplemented supple-mented by dental exercises Let a I child invigorate its teeth by chewing a hard crust better yet a handful of ISt Johns bread or carobbeane the edible pod of the Mimosa siliqua Children and whole tribes of the northern races seem to feel an instinctive in-stinctive desire to exercise their teeth upon some solid substance as pet squirrels will gnaw the furniture if you give them nutkerneld instead of nuts Thus Kohl tells us that the natives of southern Russia are addicted to the practice of chewing a vegetable product which he at first supposed to be pumpkin or melon seeds but found to be the much harder seed of theJTurkish sunflower Helianthus per ennis Their national diet coneiaifl ol milk kukuruz hominy wilh butter but-ter etc and boiled mutton and they seem to feel that their Turko man jaws need something more substantial sub-stantial The schoolboy habit of gnawing penholders finger nails Atc may have a similar significance Toe Mimosa siligua would yield abundantly abun-dantly in our douihem States and its sweet pods would make an excellent substitute for chewing gum Our practice of sipping ice cold and steaminghot drinks turn about baa also a very injurious effect upon the brittle substance that forms the enamel of our teeth no porcelain glaze would stand such abuse for any length of time and experience has taught hunters and dog fanciers that h destroys even the boaeoruhing fangs of the animal from which our canine teeth derive their name Popular Science Monthly |