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any person whose teeth begin to rot after the age of fifty
years." In a ratio inverse to the age of the teeth are they
affected by the predisposing, and susceptible to the exciting
causes of caries : because, as they advance in age, the pro-
portion of animal matter becomes less, and, consequently,
the irritability of their bony structure is diminished. From
this fact and our previous principles we understand why
caries proceeds so rapidly in the teeth of children, so as often
to destroy them in a few months. In this city we notice a
vast many instances of diseased teeth in children, often
nearly all their deciduous teeth are found carious ; for this
reason : that in general, their diet is gross, consisting of a
great proportion of animal food, pastry, and all the thousand
condiments used in our luxurious cookery. This usually
generates, in nearly all children, an inflammatory diathesis.
They are often attacked by febrile diseases. Their secre-
tions are vitiated ; mercurial medicines, which generally in-
duce an inflammatory and irritable state of the system, are
frequently exhibited, and finally, as if to complete the cli-
max of causes, the teeth are neglected, and suffered, in a
vast many cases, to be unclean, and the gums allowed to be-
come diseased, inflamed, and often in a state of ulceration.
All these constitutional and local causes, operating as we have
before explained, act with tenfold violence upon the teeth at
this tender age. All the causes, direct and indirect, of ca-
ries in the teeth of children, will be found to affect those of
the youth and adult in the same ratio that we have before
remarked. An inflammatory diathesis, accompanied with a
vitiated state of the secretions, we have considered as forming
at once a predisposing and exciting cause of caries. Hence
we learn why pregnancy, by always, or nearly so, inducing an
inflammatory and febrile state of the system, should be a peri-
od when the teeth of the female are extremely liable to be