Page 30 - My FlipBook

30 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIQUITY
'*
. . .
four incisors united together with gold wire ;* two of the incisors would
appear to have belonged to another individual, and to have been applied

Phoenician appliance found at Sidon, as represented in a cut of Renan's Mission de Phenicie.

' The incisors represented in the cut of Renan's work do not at all give the anatomical
form of upper incisors, but of lower ones. Therefore, either the figure itself has been badly
drawn, or the piece found by Dr. Gaillardot was part of the inferior and not of the superior
jaw. In the latter case, the figure in Renan's book ought to be reversed, in the manner
here shown:
Fig. 4

The same figure reversed, as it ought to be if the piece found at Sidon belonged to a lower jaw.
Neither do we understand on what ground Dr. Gaillardot has based his affirmation of
the piece discovered having belonged to a female skeleton, as it is well known that there
is no characteristic difference between a male and a female jaw.
[Interesting examples of the survival of this primitive type of dental prosthesis are
found among the Hindus at the present time. The two illustrations (Figs. 5 and 6) are
from photographs of specimens of work done by native Hindu dentists. Fig. 5 is a roughly
carved artificial tooth of ivory attached by a gold wire ligature to the adjacent natural
Fig. 5 Fig. 6

Examples of dental prosthesis as practised by the Hindus at the present time.

teeth, all of which, with the artificial tooth attached, were subsecjuently lost by alveolar
disease. Fig. 6 is a similar carved artificial tooth of ivory attached to the adjoining teeth
by a thread ligature, the supporting teeth with the attached ivory tooth also having been
lost by alveolar disease. These specimens were removed and sent to the writer by Dr.
H. B. Osborn, of Burma, during the present year (1909).—E. C. K.]