The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-04-08
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

1 rms IS an age in which teeth are pe- coming into prominence as never be- fore. Sure I know that they have always been placed by nature well to the front, but am speaking of the part they are l playing as indicative of ones health. |
 | I heard an old cynic who never tires of throwing suspicion on the medical profession say that the surgeons having cut out all the available appendices, that now they have entered with the dentists | into 2 combine to uproot all the old snags left in the mouth of the human race.
 | A raid is being made on teeth righi here in Birmingham. All you have to do | to convince yourself that it is reaching even those in high places in the profes- sional world is merely to gaze upon my good friends Drs. George Stuart and w. P. McAdory; the one the beloved pastor and the other the beloved physician. These are but two out of scores who at present are cumming their food await ing new sets of false teeth. Go to your family physician with complaint and if he fails to settle on the cause of your illness after having felt your pulse, seen your tongue, and put his steroscope over your manly bosom he will then adopt the method of horse trader and examine your teeth. not to see how old you are but to size up just how many you will have to shed.
 At this juncture you are well on the way to your dentist and when you get there, If you get out of his chair without losing a few molars and incisors and other well rooted tools of masticaton you will have unusually well developed wisdom teeth, for the man of just aver age intelligence will let the modern pull CT of teeth extract handful at a sit ting without a murmur because he has been told it's necessary for his future health.
 Is your liver out of order? get your teeth pulled; is your heart missing a stroke? get your teeth pulled; are your kidneys affected? get your teeth pulled; are your lungs perforated? get your teeth pulled;, are your eyes giving you troublet get your teeth pulled; is your hearing bad? get your teeth pulled; are. you bonehead? then be sure and get your teeth pulled.
 
 Is your stomach deranged? it is your teeth; do you suffer with rheumatism? it's your teeth; do yQu have headaches?
 it's your teeth; are you victim of gout? it's your teeth; are you harrassed by in- somnia? it's your teeth; are you made miserable by cold feet? it's your teeth; have you that advertised tired feeling?' it's your teeth. But why go on with the enumerations, for in thees days it is poor diagnostican who can't lay every ill that flesh is heir to to bad teeth.
 Some day some humorist who has lost his teeth but who wears ready made ones, is going to consult his physician and put him to shame by insisting on being told his ailment without permitting hm to examine his mouth; and when his doctor fails to locate ls.s complaint and suggests that he consult a dentist, then he is going to flash a full set of made to-order plates on him and ask him to make another guess.
 Right here I am reminded of what to me was the funniest story of attempted draft evasion that I heard during the war. It was located on a 'Yiddisher." :" It seems some one told him that if he had his teeth extracted he would be ex- empted. He took the tip and had them all pulled and then presented himself to the examining board only to find that he would have been rejected on account of havin g flat feet.
 Now far be it from me to cast any aspersior on the honorable body of den- lists who are meeting in annual session in our dity; or even to hint that there is any collusion between them and the practitioners of medicine in the state of Alabama to rob our eitizenry of the teeth which nature gave them and substitute therefor the handiwork of men to aid in performing their part in chewing their food properly in order to conserve their health
 I will only go so far in the way of giving my opinion by telling of my friend John Andrews, who lived in For syth, Ga, during my pastorate in that delightful little city. He used to come by my study on his way to his various farms and take me with him for an out tation I noticed on all of them that he had gang of wood cutters busily cut ting down all the available timber.
 One day on our way home I said: John, you ought to be ashamed to de- nude your places of trees. for it is lit tie short of vandalism the way you are cutting down the virgnal forests. and some one ought to enjoin you, for you are a menace' He turned to me and broke out in a laugh saying: Brother Barnett, if I had my way there wouldn't be left timber enough .n Monroe county for switches"
 Now, it seems to me that unless some relief can be found to stop the physicians and dentists in the state from their wholesale thinning out of natural teeth. that there will not be left in our heads enough for exhibition purposes to let the ,i,,, tinr, l.