Year: 1878

Reformers sometimes make mistakes
| This is, perhaps, rather too novel ant
startling an assertion for this sort o
weather, but it is, nevertheless, true
There have been eminent Reformers wht
have spent their whole lives in attacking
supposed aliases which were not abuse
! at all Such is unquestionably the con
I duct Of the leaders of the great anti
tooth h-pick crusade, and when they dis
cover their mistake they will be tor
mented by intolerable pangs of quick
ened conscience.
Everybody knows how the anti-tootk
pick orators have denounced the loathe
some vice Of publicly chewing tooth
picks. They have described in terms o.
revolving realism the shameful spectacle
presented by the man who stands on the
sidewalk or sits in the street.car slowly
biting the extremity of tooth-pick
They have shown US how the victim o
this vice, beginning with the seductive
and costly quill, finally finds that no
thing satisfies his unholy appetite but
the coarse, fiery, wooden tooth picks ot
the cheap restaurants. Good men and
women have been melted to tears as
some eloquent orator told of an imagina
ry yong man who, becoming
addicted to the tootnpick habit
sunk, step by step, until he would
frequently chew tooth picks at
the public table or in the presence OF
ladies with callous shamelessness that
proved how completely the last vestige
of selfrespect had vanished from his
breast. Then columns of statistics have
been quoted to show the enormous
amount of money that is annually squan-
dered by the victim of this terrible habit.
Confirmed masticators of tooth-picks are
represented as having sold their last
stick of furniture and their family Bible,
thereby leaving their wives and children
to suffer from cold and hunger, so that
they could buy fresh bundles of the
body and soul destroying tooth picks. So
wide spread is this vice said to be that
no professional Reformer believes that
it can be checked except by the severest
legislation, and a prohibitory tooth pick
law is demanded as the only hope Of our
unhappy country.


Now, there is more or less truth in
these painful descriptions of the ravages
of the tooth-pick habit. For example, it
must be conceded that the most loathe
some object on earth is the man
who publicly chews his tooth-pick. In
comparison with him the drunkard is at
tractive, and the tobacco chewer is
cleanly Indeed, there is reason to be
lieve that the celebrated mark of Cain,
which created a desire on the part Of
every one who saw him to kill him, was
in reality a tooth-p which the proto
murderer constantly chewed. A like
desire is created in the public breast by
every man who at the present day shows
himself with tooth-pick projecting from
his mouth, though, unfortunately, an
artificial code of morals forbids US to
slake our natural thirst for his blood.
Also, it is sufficiently clear that the habit
does produce widespread misery. Many
a small-boy who has respected his father
as a man of virtue and honor, has sud-
denly lost this respect on seeing him in
the act of chewing tooth pick. and has
thenceforth felt nothing but contempt
for the wretched man, while thousands
of wives have fed from once happy
homes, on learning that their husbands
had become addicted to the revoltin g
vice. All this is but too true, and yet
the tooth pick habit, in its origin, was,
and to very great extent still is, a
blessing to mankind.


There is an intimate connection be-
tween the mind and the teeth. Every
man who has suffered from toothache
knows this to be fact. There are GER
tain nerves in the human mouth which,
if they are inhamed or injured in any
way, instantly stimulate the faculty of
profanity to what may in one sense be
called automatic action. This is especial
ly the case with the large nerve of the
right upper biouspid. If you take a mild
clergyman, and thrust rusty pin into
this particular nerve, he will instantly
use language of the most strongly
marked theological character. But it is
unnecessary to try experiments of this
kind, since the connection between the
teeth and the mind is universally ac
! knowledged. In fact, the entire jaw is
in close relations with the brain, and
what affects the one affects to some ex
tent the other.


Now, it was in accordance with this
physiological law that an eminent physi
clan devised the tooth.pick treatmen
| for idiots and persons of weak mind
by irritating the alveolar process, the
mind of the patient was awakened t.
temporary activity. He took congeni
tai idiot, aged % years, who had neve


been able to speak or to use his hand


or feet, and, after giving him three mod
erate-sized wooden tooth-picks, the idio
spoke plainly and intelligibly of tn


price of North western preferred, and Of


fered to take one hundred QuicksilVe


at Is, buyer thirty. 1t is true that a


soon as the stimulus of the tooth -picl


was kept in the mouth and constantl


chewed, his faculties were sufficient


awake to enable him to act with fai


degree of intelligence.


Charmed with this experiment. tn


physician obtained leave to introduc


the tooth pick trcatmon mt into our larges


idiot asy lums. The result surpasse


his most sanGuine cancellations Tb