The Teeth

It is certain that a person cannot take full pleasure in the food he craves unless his teeth are free of disease.

Good chewing is necessary, because the digestion of food is a chemical action. Speed in digesting food is obtained by chewing it well. Conversely, if the teeth do not chew well, the digestive juice acts upon the food only superficially, and its inside rots; then gases and poisons arise which affect the general health.

And now, what is teething — that is, the appearance of the teeth in infancy and their falling out?

The answer is that teething is the period during which the teeth appear, and it ranges between two years and about two and a half. In some cases the appearance of the teeth is very easy, and in other cases very hard, so that the child suffers painful torment which may even lead to death. While the child is in perfect health, signs of an upset temper suddenly appear in him, his disposition sours, and he becomes uneasy in sleep and in waking — and this is among the symptoms of teething.

The sign of teeth about to appear is, most often, a redness in the gums. And when the gum is raised higher than it was — especially if the child feels pain when it is touched, and the flow of saliva from his mouth increases, with looseness of the bowels and troubled sleep: if the child is sound of body and strong of constitution, his general health is not affected by the appearance of his teeth. But if whiteness is found at the spot on the gum and the teeth do not appear within two to five days, and the child is in distress, recourse is had to the dentist to lance the gum at that spot.

Q — What are the times of the teeth's appearance in infancy, and of their falling out?

A — The first lower incisors: from the sixth month to the eighth

The first upper incisors: from the eighth month to the tenth

The second lower incisors: from the ninth month to the twelfth

The second upper incisors: from the twelfth month to the twentieth

The lower canine: from the twentieth month to the thirty-second

The upper canine: in the twenty-fourth month.

A child's teeth are, as a rule, twenty only, though at times there are exceptions. As for the permanent teeth, they appear from the age of six and a half and are complete in the thirteenth year; their number is twenty-eight, apart from the four wisdom teeth. These four molars begin to appear, as a rule, from the seventeenth year onward, and they follow no rule.

Q — What is the lasting method of cleaning the teeth?

A — The method of cleaning the teeth is the most important of all things for preserving the teeth and the gums, and the cleaning is adapted according to the condition of the gums — that is, the set of the teeth — an explanation of which we shall give in the future.