Page 188 - My FlipBook

108 Tooth Poivders.

TOOTH PICKS.
Tooth picks, though so trifling, we conceive to be dental im-
plements of great utility : they should be in the pocket of
every gentleman and used after every meal, to remove the
particles of food lodged between the teeth, in order to prevent
its decomposition and consequent effects. If tooth picks are
of so much service to gentleman, why may not their use prove
of advantage to ladies also ? We would strongly recommend
them to give it a place in their boudoir.
Tooth picks are made of gold, silver, steel, ivory, tortoise
shell, and of goose quils. The best dentists of the age Jo not
approve of the use of metalic tooth picks, thinking them to be
injurious, or not so useful as other kinds, those made of tor-
toise shell answer a better purpose but one made of a com-
;
mon goose quill is to be prefered to all others : it becomes quite
soft and yielding in the mouth and may be used with impunity.

TOOTH POWDERS,
In no part of the deatal profession has more whim, fancy,
ignorance and empiricism prevailed, than in the inventions of
tooth powders : some have exerted their wits to find out a
dentifrice that should in itself prove a penacea for the teeth
;
others for lucre's sake, to compound one that should please
the people by making the teeth beautifully white.
From the earliest era of medical science, in all countries, a
great variety of recipes for tooth powders have been handed
down to us, some the most singular and absurd in their com-
position. One would suppose, in looking at the formulas for
dentifrices given by the ancients, that they vied with each
other in the greatest, number of articles, some of them the