TRISTAN’S GOOD TEETH

Evening Star, Issue 19442, 28 December 1926, Page 6

TRISTAN’S GOOD TEETH

What is probably the _ first medical report ever issued of the island of Tristan da Cunha, Britain’s loneliest possession, situated in the South Atlantic 1,500 miles to the west of the Cape of Good Hope, has been made to the Medical Research Council, It reports good health in this little world without doctors (says the ‘Daily Mail ). Of the island’s population of 141 fifty were medically examined and one-third of the islanders-dentally examined by Dr E. H. Marshall, surgeon to the steamer Discovery. . , , . .. Dr Marshall’s report, reprinted in the ‘British Medical Journal,’ shows that among twelve people whose ages ranged between forty-live and ninety there were only twenty-one carious teeth in all, and only forty-five teeth were missing. Of a number of others examined, no one had a tooth missing, and not one of the teeth was carious. Although in no case did anyone admit to cleaning his or her teeth more often than once a week, and then only with finger and soap, the teeth were clean and remarkably free from salivary calculus. It is probably correct to say that the islanders, as a whole, never clean their teeth.