Page 229 - My FlipBook

chew foods that were too difficult to chew before. Now,
this comes in a large degree from a fad that we find among
young girls, and sometimes among the boys, too, that it
isn't a delicate thing to take hard substances and chew them
with their teeth; and furthermore, it may injure the teeth.
Now, gentlemen, the teeth are strong enough so that they
are not liable to be Injured by any foodstuff whatever. You
might injure the teeth by biting upon steel or upon the
hard metals or upon gravel or such things as that that
sometimes are found in food, or shot in game ; but not often
upon shot, for the lead is soft and will give way.
Now. it will become your duty to train your patients
in the use of their teeth, not only for the benefit it will be
to the gums and to the peridental membranes of the teeth,
but for the benefit it will be to the person generally. But
there is a wider reason than this: The rule is that the cleaning
the teeth get by the proper effort in mastication is the best cleaning
they zi'ill get. It is the most regular. Persons will clean their
teeth in this way three times a day certainly, by the excur-
sions of food as it passes over the teeth in miastication, and
it is the best cleaning and the best prophylactic against
caries that we can possibh^ make.

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