Page 44 - My FlipBook

MECHANICAL DENTISTRY AND METALLURGY.
32 — —
In another place, " Temperament in Relation to Teeth,"
Dr. James W. White, previously quoted, gives many 1
appropriate thoughts and suggestions, the importance of
which justifies our quoting at some length :
Tciiipcrainciit may be defined as a constitutional organ-
''
ization, depending primarily upon heredity—national or
ancestral—and consisting chiefly in a certain relative pro-
portion of the mechanical, nutritive, and nervous systems,
and the relative energy of the various functions of the body,
—the reciprocal action of the digestive, respiratory, circu-
latory, and nervous systems. The stomach, liver, lungs,
heart, and brain—digestion, assimilation, respiration, cir-
culation, and innervation—are all factors in the differentia-
tion of temperament ; and according to the congenital pre-
dominance of one or the other, and the relative activity of
these functions, is the modification of the characteristic of
the individual which assigns him to one or the other of the
basal or mixed temperaments. Each temperament is the
result as well as the indication of the preponderance of one
or another of these systems and of relative functional
activity.
" Temperaments are readily divisible into four basal
classes,- bilious, saiiguiuco'iis, nervous, and lynipJiatic (see
Tables) ; then again into sub-classes of mixed tempera-
ments, a combination of two or more of the primary divis-
ions. In these combinations one or other of the so-called
basal temperaments predominates, and a compound term
is used to express the complexity, as, for instance, the
nervo-bilious, signifying that the bilious base, the founda-
tion of temperament, is qualified by an admixture of the
nervous element, and so throughout the series.
"
The value of a practical application of the study of
temperament in the practice of dentistry is apparent. That
the relation of the teeth to temperament is, as a rule, ignored