Of Mice And Molars

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31113, 16 July 1966, Page 13

Of Mice And Molars

(From the "Guardian’*) 1 , T ETTERS from America, ; Germany, Canada, and all ' parts of Britain are arriving hat the offices of the Bolton ! | National Health Executive I Council in defence of an ' ■ elderly man who blamed mice Hfor the disappearance of his ;: bottom dentures. ; The members of the council ’ were inclined to accept his story with a pinch of salt , ’ when granting him a free reL ■ placement on hardship grounds, but the letters re- ■ i veal that false teeth have an odd fascination for mice and i. rats. ’ A retired missionary at i' Scarborough, Ontario, tells of jan incident in Nigeria more i than 60 years ago when a doctor missionary lost his s teeth which were found six ' months later in a mouse or ’ rat nest in the wall of a ' mud hut. ' A Strawn, Illinois, house- ; wife writes of her mother-in- ; law whose fondness for chocolate caramel candy was her downfall. Mice carried away ’lher lower dentures, which ' | were never seen again. “We ’ ■ figure the candy which was probably left on the teeth was ' I what attracted the mouse,” ’lshe adds. Cheese was on the ’!menu the night a 61-year-old /man lost his dentures while ‘lstaying at a Kent guest- *! house. A dentist in Germany tells of making a set of dentures ’ for a woman refugee from " East Germany soon after the last war. They disappeared t and were recovered from a , rat’s nest under the floor. I Mr Thomas Meadley, the J clerk to the executive counf cil, who is to reply to the letters, said they had found ’ them interesting and amus- . ing. He is filing with the ’ letters “more salt to add to your pinch”—which one of f the American correspondents t enclosed in tinfoil.