University of Maryland Baltimore Dental School - Mirror Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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THE MIRROR very bad. Caries, with its resulting odontalgia, is quite common ; but the most frequent cause of trouble is the accumulation of tar- tar. It is one of the peculiarities of the peculiar land that among the females one seldom meets with beauty, either among the very young or the aged. In both cases they are entirely devoid of color, but in early womanhood it is not rare, nor is color wanting to lend its charm. The teeth of the musmies, or daughters, of Japan are objects of envy, but the horrible custom of blacking the teeth after marriage destroys what little beauty time has not yet stolen. Ir- regularities are common. Their teeth being large, the jaw is not sufficiently expanded for their proper placement. Owing to the fact that dentistry exists only as a mechanical trade, the status of those who practice it is not high. Dentistry does not give social position, neither does it wealth. In full practice, a dentist may get two or three cases in a month, and for some he may receive as high as $5 ; but that is a price far above the ability of the majority to pay, from $i to $2 being the usual rate. The base is always of wood. On the cheaper sorts the teeth are merely outlined upon the base, but generally they consist of ivory, shark ' s teeth, or stone, set into the wood and retained in position by being strung on a thread, which is secured at each end by a peg driven into the hole where it makes its exit from the base. The Japanese are a very dextrous people, and if superstitions could be eliminated much in a mechanical sense might be expected. Ancient Phoenicia, bordering on the eastern coast of the Medi- terranean Sea, was particularly noted for its two great cities, Sidon and grand Tyre, and these cities, in turn, were famous for their manufacturers and artists. With Phoenician art and science the modern world has been little acquainted until the discoveries made by General de Cesnola, the results of which are in the Ces- nola collection at the Metropolitan Museum, New York city. A specimen of ancient Phoenician dentistry is accurately described by M. Ernest Renan in his work, entitled Mission de Phoenicie et le Campangne de Sidon, as follows : But that which was most interesting was the upper portion of a woman ' s jaw, showing th e 16

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THE MIRROR folklore says : If a man dreams that his false teeth have fallen out it is a bad omen that his children will soon die. Among the orthodox Jews, specially of the large cities of Europe, where the rabbis are regarded as the lawgivers of Hebrew communities even now after the Ghetto era, none will submit to a dental opera- tion unless the ingredients used by the operators are pronounced by their spiritual advisers as not prohibited by the rabbinical code or the ceremonial law. Anything obtained from the bodies of such animals as swine, hippopotami, oysters, etc., would be posi- tively forbidden to be used in dentures to be applied to Jewish patrons. The Chinese were in ancient days a persevering people and made w onderful advancements in the arts, and especially in the sciences. The practice of dentistry in China is doubtless very an- cient, but it has not attained that perfection which characterizes the modern art. It is well known that the Chinese attribute tooth- ache to the gnawing of worms and that their dentists claim they take these worms from decayed teeth. The Chinese doctor or den- tist ranks no higher than the ordinary skilled workman. He gets from 15 to 20 cents a visit, and he often takes patients on condi- tion that he will cure them within a certain time, or no pay. He never sees his female patients except behind a screen, and he does not pay a second visit unless he is invited. His pay is called golden thanks, and the orthodox way of sending it to him is to wrap it in red paper. Artificial teeth among the Chinese of medie- val times were seldom worn, since the dental surgeon not only seemed skilled enough to preserve them, but the Chinese were known to be the possessors of sound teeth. We now leave the superstitious Chinaman and wander to his neighbor, the skillful and dextrous Japanese. It is a little re- markable that a nation which places the value they do upon their teeth and who take the care that is everywhere evident of their appearance should be ignorant of everything relating to them other than their mere mechanical substitution. Taken as a race, the Japanese have not good teeth, neither can they be said to be IS

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THE MIRROR two superior cuspids and four incisors united by gold thread. Two of these incisors seemed to have belonged to another person and to have been placed there in order to replace the missing ones. This piece, which was found in one of the most ancient vaults, proves that the art of dentistry was pretty far advanced at Sidon. The rise of the Mohammedan empire, which influenced Europe so deeply both politically and intellectually, made its mark also in the history of medicine and surgery. Although the Arab thought more of his steed than of his wife, yet he did not fail to appreciate self and give time and attention to the pillars of the mouth, as he called the teeth. Among the archives of tradition in Arabia we are informed that the augur and physician Navius Aetius, as early as 300 A. D., discovered the foramina in the roots through which the nerves and vessels enter the pulp chamber, and for years subsequent to this discovery the Christian world was ignorant of this and other of his important finds. Arabians never cease boasting of Aetius, who, at one time, was a professor and tutor in the medical and dental departments of the celebrated Alex- andrian University. The custom of washing the mouth every morning, which is adopted by several nations, has become the sub- ject of a religious precept among the Arabians to make the little ablution with the face turned toward Mecca ; they rinse the mouth thrice and clean their teeth with a brush. This custom shows how highly the preservation of the teeth is esteemed by a people who formerly were forbidden, according to Menavius, to have a tooth extracted without permission from the chief. The Greeks, it is said, learned what the Egyptians knew, and, no doubt, the science of dental surgery emigrated from Egypt to Greece, as did nearly all knowledge. Homer, the great Greek sage and historian, tells us that sculapius, a surgeon who lived about 1250 B. C., used a narcotic to produce insensibility when performing minor operations, such at tooth-drawing. He, too, we are informed, was the first to teach the art of tooth purging and filling. He was thought of so l ighly by the Greeks that a statue 17