The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1881-12-22
Hygiene Of the Teeth,

hard crust Is the best possible dem
thrice. l never could get myself to
believe in the natural necessity of
toothbrush. The African nations, the
Hindoos, the natives of Southern
Europe, the South Sea Islanders the
Arabs, the South American vegetarians,
in short, three-fourths of our fellow
men, besides our next relatives, the
frugivorous animals, have splendid
teeth without sozodont. Ireally believe
that ours decay from sheer disuse; the
clearinghouse homo lives chiefly on
pap-wants all his meats soft-boiled,
and growls at cold biscuit or an under
done potatoe; in other words, he dele
gates to the cook the proper functions
of his teeth. We hear occasionally of
old men getting second, or rather
third, set of teeth, ! met one of them
in Northern Guatemala, and ascertained
that he had become toothless during a
twelve years sojourn in seaport town,
and that he got his new set upon hisre-
turn to his native village, where circum-
stances obliged him to resume the hard
corn-cake diet of his boyhood years.
His teeth had reappeared as soon as
their services were called for, and would
probably never have absented ITEM
selves if pap-diet had not made them
superhuous.
An artificial dentiflice will certainly
keep the teeth white, but that does not
prevent their premature decay; disuse
gradually softens their substance, till
one fine day the hash-eater snaps his
best incisOr upon an unexpected piece
of bone. Every old dentist knows hun
arcds of city customers whom the daily
use of toothbrush did not save from
the applying, before the end of the for
tieth year, for complete "celluloid
set" / do not say that soft tooth
brush and such dentifrices as oatmeal
or bnrned arrow-root can do any harm,
but, for sanitary purposes, such precau-
tons must be supplemented by dental
exercise.
Let child invigorate its teeth by
chewing q hard crust, or, better yet, o
handful of "St. Johns Bread" or
carob-beans, the edible pod of the NJ
moSd silsQuo. Children and whole
tribes of the Northern races seem to
feel an instructive desire to exercise
their teeth upon some solid substance,
as pct squirrels will gnaw the furniture
if you give them nut-kernels instead of
nuts. Thus Kohl tells lis that the ma
tives of Southern Russia are addicted
to the practice of chewing vegetable
product which he at first supposed to
be pumpkin or melon seeds, but found
to be the much harder seed of the Tur-
kish sunhower (Helianthus perennis).
| Their national diet consists of milk,
kukuruz (hominy, with butter, etc. },
and boiled mutton, and they seem tc
feel that their Turkoman jaws need
something more substantial. The
schoolboy habit of gnawing pen-hold'
ers, finger-nails, ETC., may have sim.
liar significance. The Mimosa siliqua
would yield abundantly in our Southern
Statesy and its sweet pods would make
an excellent substitute for chewing.
gum. Our practice of slipping ice-cold
and steaming-hot drinks, turn abont,
has also q very injurious effect upon
the brittle substance that forms the
enamel Of our teeth; noporcelain glaze
would stand such abuse for any length
of time, and experience has taught
hunters and dog fanciers that it destroys
even the bone-cpushing fangs Of the
animal from which our canine teeth de-
rive their name. DE- Felir L. Oswald,
IN Popular Science Monthly.