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116 PATHOLOGY OF THE HARD TISSUES OF THE TEETH.
An antitoxin will prevent persons taking a certain disease.
For instance, the antitoxin of diphtheria, if properly applied in
time during a diphtheria epidemic, will prevent children from
taking diphtheria. It acts as a control. Here we are introducing
into the blood a material, or combination of matter, which con-
trols or prevents the development of disease. So many of these
have now been proved as to give the strongest possible evidence
that all of them are material. We go through the process of
vaccination to produce a material condition in our own bodies
that will prevent us from taking smallpox. An antitoxin is
produced in the blood, in the juices in the tissues of our bodies,
which is antagonistic to the disease known as smallpox. In
these ways we are learning to control a number of the most
destructive diseases.
Disease is also said to be hereditary. Tuberculosis has been
reputed to be intensely hereditary. That condition depends
upon some material element in the body; just what this is, we
may not know now. A person is not born with tuberculosis ; it
is not transmissible from parent to child, but the child is born
with a material constitution of body which renders it particu-
larly liable to contract the disease, but it will not have tubercu-
losis unless exposed to the tuberculosis infection; but it
contracts it more readily than other people. There is that ele-
ment in the body juices and tissues which enables that particular
microorganism to grow more freely or produce more injury
than in other persons. That is what constitutes a hereditary
predisposition to disease.
"We find in certain families a hereditary predisposition to
caries of the teeth that is strongly marked. If a family of chil-
dren is presented for treatment and it is found that the father
or mother, or both, have suffered severely in early youth from
caries of the teeth, we may be reasonably sure that the children
will suffer likewise. "We find this almost universally true of
families. Not only this, but we find in very many instances
that the first beginning and the order of progress will be in
the same teeth, and otherwise similar in character and form. I
have followed these peculiarities now through four generations
of persons, and find these particular characteristics to be heredi-
tary. There are certain conditions, however, that seem to influ-
ence these hereditary peculiarities in a very marked degree. It
is noted perhaps most in those families that come from Europe
and settle in America. In these, where the parents are immune,
or very nearly immune, to caries of the teeth, we find them pre-