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Tartar of the Teeth. 155
colored, or covered with tartar is diminished. If the teeth
have a perfectly smooth surface, they can easily be kept clean
with a brush and water : if they be rough, this can hardly be
done with the addition of a tooth powder.
METHOD OP POLISHING.
The teeth can be best and most expeditiously polished, with
proper tooth brushes, bits of soft pine wood, pumice stone very
finely pulverized, and crocus. The teeth may first be thorough-
ly but carefully brushed with the pumice stone ; then with
the bits of wood, they are to be rubbed wherever they are
rough, especially near the gums and between the teeth, first
with the pumice stone and then with the crocus, which will
give them a high and beautiful polish. The front teeth may
be polished on their contiguous sides, by running silk thread
with pumice stone between them. This last operation is
highly useful for the prevention of decay, for whenever a tooth
is about to be attacked by external decay, the enamel is always
found rough, which favors the lodgement of foreign matter;
if it be now polished, this disposition is removed. Hence also,
the importance of polishing the sides of teeth after they have
been filed. Whenever the front teeth are the least black or
discolored, the discoloration should be removed, if possible, by
the means just mentioned, and if this cannot be done, no time
should be lost in having recourse to the file, for their separation.
There is one state of the teeth, requiring polishing which
we wish especially to mention, as it is exceedingly injurious
to the teeth, and conducive to their decay.
The teeth of young persons are very often seen covered
with a brown or greenish yellow scurf, especially the front
teeth ; this also occasionally happens to persons more advanced
in life. If the teeth of such persons be closely examined, the
enamel will be found very rough, and if it could be micro-
scopically examined, ten thousand little holes or rather depres-
sions would be observed in it, in which, the foreign matter or