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44 PATHOLOGY OF THE HAED TISSUES OF THE TEETH.
cause, leaving a smooth, glossy surface in dentin, or in enamel,
or in both, is the distinguishing feature of erosion.
FREQUENCE OF EROSION.
As to frequence of occurrence, erosion is rare as compared
with caries. Formerly my estimate of this was that less than
one person per thousand had erosion of their teeth. Certainly
it was very rare among my patients in Jacksonville, Illinois,
though I saw a good many more than my proper share through
consultations. For some years after I began teaching operative
dentistry, and had opportunity to see the larger proportion of
the patients in the clinic, they still were not plentiful. Finally
I asked the Examiner to call my attention to every case he could
find among those applying for treatment of any kind. This
brought out so much larger proportion of cases as to cause me
to believe that many had been overlooked previously. It is prob-
able that very many cases are overlooked by practitioners. The
evidence on this point, however, remains very uncertain.
Among the patients applying at our clinic, about one per
cent of erosion is found. These people are mostly friends of
the students. They are not of the very poor nor of the wealthy.
I find among them erosion of every variety of form that I have
seen elsewhere, but the rounded cuts across the teeth that tend
to become stationary, or cease to progress, seem to be in the
majority. Many of these cases stop spontaneously before any
considerable injury is done.
Erosion is much more frequent in some certain classes of
people than in others. Considerable inquiry has been made
among practitioners regarding this. Some seldom see a case,
while others find it very frequent. Especially those whose prac-
tice is confined closely to very well-to-do people find it most
frequent, and of a character to do the greatest injury. One prac-
titioner who has a practice among well-to-do Jewish people stated
that all of his patients had erosion and insisted that that was lit-
erally correct. I then asked him to take as many casts as he could
for me. "Within a few weeks he turned over so many that his
statement seemed to be fully justified. Not many practitioners
can make casts of fifty to seventy cases of erosion from their own
patients within five or six weeks. He gave me a set of casts
from a young man of twenty, his father, his grandfather and
his great-grandfather, all taken the same week, each showing
erosion. This practitioner is fully convinced by his observations
among these people that erosion is hereditary. They are prac-
tically all descendants of a few Jewish families who settled in