TEETH AND HEALTH

Evening Star, Issue 18288, 30 May 1923, Page 4

TEETH AND HEALTH

DENTISTS IN CONFERENCE. About 100 members of the New Zealand Dental Association from all parts of the dominion assembled at Canterbury College Hall yesterday morning, when the mayor (Mr J. A. FJcsher) tendered them a civic reception. Mr O. V. Davies, L.D.S., of Otago, president of the association, was in the chair, and briefly welcomed the delegates. Mr Davies then delivered his presidential address, which exhaustively dealt with the history of the profession from its earliest days, and traced tho gradual evolution of various primitive processes for extraction down to the painless, efficient methods in vogue to-day. With regard to tho standard of dentistry at tho present time, he said that it had been found that a knowledge of anatomy, physiology, surgery, medicine, and metallurgy was essential to modern treatment. The development of the .X-ray had furnished invaluable diagnostic aid in the treatment of many affections, tho cause of which might otherwise be doubtful. For many years tho dental profession had been urging that sepsis in the mouth must affect in a deleterious manner tho health of the individual. As far as the majority of medical men were concerned these suggestions fell on deaf oars. Within recent years, however, there had been a great awakening, and some had rushed to the other extreme, and put many troubles down to infection .from the teeth when tho latter were not the cause at all, wrongly insisting on their extraction. In all cases it was the dentist who should! be the judge as to whether tho teeth should be extracted or saved. Nevertheless, this campaign of oral infection was having a stimulating effect upon dentistry. It was realised that to restore defective teeth to usefulness and to prevent farther trouble Very great care must he taken in filling operations. The delicate balance of Nature was so much a part and parcel of the health of the individual that to prevent dental troubles entirely it was obvious that the standard of health must be raised to normal, something that could not be done in a generation or two. In the meantime much could be done by prophylactics to improve dental conditions now existing, and along these lines a start has been made in several countries.