“KEEP YOUR TEETH,” SAYS DENTIST.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17991, 30 October 1926, Page 28

“KEEP YOUR TEETH,” SAYS DENTIST.

AN AUCKLAND COMMENT ON EXTRACTION MANIA. (Special to the “Star.”) AUCKLAND, October 29. “ It seems to me that some of those doctors have two prescriptions—yank your teeth out and go away _ for a change. If they can’t hit it with one they try the other.” So said an amusing American who had been struck, like so many other people, with the large number of toothless folk he met. “ Every other person one met seemed to be under orders to shed his own natural molars and be artificially refitted top and bottom. When you asked the reason for this sudden decision . to go in for a rat trap, the victims sheltered behind a curt doctor's orders, or went into a painfull y detailed account of the terrible state of their teeth, producing an X-ray negative of . their jaws which had been supplied to I them as a proof.” A leading Auckland dentist was most emphatic in denouncing this wholesale sacrifice of perfectly good teeth. It seems that X-rays have revealed in many jaws a state of things which should not exist, due entirely to shoddy and ignorant dentistry. “ But,” said the dentist, “ to condemn all work for that reason is not only foolish, but it leads to exploitation of the public. We all know that there is a certain amount of dishonest and ignorant dentistry. That does not justify some of the doctors in the wholesale manner in which they deprive people of one of their most valuable assets, their own natural teeth. Crowned teeth are particularly objectionable to these doctors. As you are probably aware, the doctor always looks for the source of infection and because, in certain cases, badly crowned teeth or badly filled teeth have been found when X-rayed to be diseased at the root, some of these medical men get panic whenever they find that a patient has had anything whatever done to his teeth, and issue an order to have the whole lot pulled out and replaced with false. It is not unreasonable. but simply means exploiting the people, and putting them to quite unnecessary expense. I have known cases where a medical man ordered perfectly good sound teeth to be extracted, teeth whose soundess I have seen demonstrated by X-Ray and every other test. While it is quite true that such a tiling as bad dentistry does exist that is no reason whatever for condemning all dentistry. Sensible people should hang on to their sound teeth as they would on to their lives. Apparently this craze for pulling out teeth had run its course elsewhere before it arrived in New Zealand. In the September “Dental Cosmos,” the recognised organ of the profession in the United States, there is a very wellreasoned editorial headed “Subsidence of the Extraction Mania,” which deals with this very question. Jt is with a feeling of considerable satisfaction that we note an unmistakable tendency of a return to a saner and safer attitude of the mind on the part of the medical profession with regard to the indiscriminate and ruthless extraction of teeth as a cure-all for almost any and every serious bodily ill, that they are unable to readily diagnonse says the article. Through all disturbing, and at times distressing, hysteria for sacrificing all pulpless teeth we have remained steadfastly on the side of conservatism, and, as the knowledge of focal infection has be.come more scientific in character, we have felt double assured of the soundness of our position. • The more recent developments in this field, or rather a more sane consideration of the clinical aspects of focal infection by the medical man, and a compelling j realisation of the responsibilities of the dental practitioner in the matter, are i slowly but surely convincing both pro Ifessions that all diseases which cannot be otherwise readily explained do riot necessarily have their origin in the

much abused dental organs. The article points out that it has been clearly demonstrated that infection about the teeth might as often be the effect of focal infection elsewhere in the body as it was the cause of infection in other parts, and winds up with renewed thanks that extremists are at last returning to a saner attitude.