Page 187 - My FlipBook

below that age, and the most of them in their teens or in the
early twenties. There are exceptions to this rule. I saw a
very prominent one in the infirmary only a few days ago
where there was a recurrence of susceptibility in after life,
and you will see the same conditions, the whitened lines ex-
tending away from the cavity in various directions, particu-
larly along the gum lines, in these persons that we see in the
children. Susceptibility is recurring, some change in the con-
dition of the body has occurred, giving opportunity again for
this caries fungus to act in producing caries, and we find prac-
tically similar conditions to those that have occurred in the
child. The cavity will not be exactly in the same position;
the conditions have changed, the free gum margins are short,
the decay will occur very close to the gingival line, if they
are buccal decays, and many of them in proximate decays we
will find close down to the gingival line, usually because of
wearing of the contacts, however, in these cases, making them
flat, causing lodgment of food, etc., making the condition for
decay.
Then these factors are the factors to be studied care-
fully and closely in the future during your practice, from
mouth to mouth, from child to child, year by year, as they
grow up under your care, and it is upon this that you will base
your plans of practice, if you are wise. The man who takes
the rules which we lay down for the operative procedures in
dentistry and follows them without this study of conditions
and of the application of them, simply operates by rote; he is
not an independent practitioner; he is not a practitioner who
is using the highest intelligence possible to him. It is the
man who studies these factors from mouth to mouth and
makes the knowledge derived in this way the controlling ele-
ment in his practice that is the independent practitioner, who
knows what he is doing and whv he is doing it, and he is
generally the successful practitioner as well.

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