Untitled

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 779, 18 April 1870, Page 4

Mb D Alton, of England, by careful experiments has shown that where there ia a mellow soil three feet under any crop, it can defy the weather and come to maturity without a drop of rain after the Ist of June. This shows that successful tillage husbandry on our arid plains depends on deep p toughing.

TOOTHACHE AMONG THE ANCIENTS. One by one our illusions as to the " good old times " vanish. Long Had we cherished (says the Medical Times and Gazette) an idea that at least decayed teeth were unknown to our hardy ancestors, and were the peculiar privilege of our frivolous civilization. Mr Mummery, in an able paper before the Odontological Society, has shown, however, that teeth were at times unsound even when the ancient inhabitants of the British islands lived on coarse meal or the produce of the chase. Mr Mummery has examined all the ancient skulls within his reach in otder to determine this point. Beginning with the long-headed race, who are the earliest known human in-; habitants, and who have been supposed to be of a Basque type, he found few instances of real decay, not many of wearing down, and none of dental irregularity amongst sixty eight Wiltshire skulls; whilst among the rounded skulls from the same county, supposed to belong to the later Belgic immigrants whom Caesar found in possession of the southern part of the island, there were many more cases of caries, more also of wearing away, and some of irregularity, which Mr Mummery believes to be indicative of a coarse vegetable diet, and scarcity of animal food. Oddly enough, in Yorkshire the skulls of the earlier or long-headed race exhibited many signs of dental disease, both caries, wear and tear, and signs of abscesses. As for the Romans in Britain, the practice of burning their dead makes collecting of skulls by no means easy, yet out of 143 Brittano-Roman skulls 41 had carious teeth; irregularity and abscess were also common, but not wearing away. No traces of stopping or of artificial teeth have been found. Amongst Egyptian skulls wearing of the teeth is very common, from the gritty, sandy character of the flour, and caries is by no means unfrequent. There are no traces of stopping, and it seems that the art of dentistry was almost confined to the extraction of the teeth. Mr Mummery's conclusion is that dental disease is not the exclusive privilege of a high state of civilisation.