DENTAL HYGIENE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3705, 18 October 1927, Page 4

DENTAL HYGIENE.

Wlhon Sir James’Parr, as Minister of Education, introduced the school dental nurses service, the proposal was vigorously opposed by Dr. H. G. Pickerill, then director of the dental school at Otago University. \ln a letter published in the London Spectator recently, Dr. Pickerill vigorously criticises the system of authorising nurses with two years’ training to operate on children’s teeth. “This is not dental hygiene; it is cheap dentistry. If is obviously fundamentally wrong, and is having a most unfortunate effect upon the morale of New Zealand children and parents,” he declares. “It is not the duty of the State to interfere in treatment; it is the preeminent duty of the State to initiate and carry out prevention. Dental caries can be prevented but it means care, thought, and sacrifice, and these things being highly unpopular* no politicians will haev anything to do with them, much less take active measures to enforce them. On the other hand free (albeit unqualified) dentistry is highly popular and finds ready support. Sufficient is known of the cause and prevention of decay of the teeth to eliminate at least 70 to 80 per cent, of its incidence if the principles were thoroughly taught and enforced. While we may, to a considerable extent, lessen the force of the attack by cleanliness of the teeth and by reduction in consumption of soft, sticky starches and sugars, yet our sheet anchor here as in other infections must be an increase in resistance —in this case by increasing the density of the enamel surface of teeth (which has gone back considerably as compared with that of our ancestors) and by increasing the amount and alkalinity of the saliva (decay being initiated byjsmall molecules of nascent lactic acid formed in the crevices of the teeth). Both these factors, enamel density and salivary secretion, are controllable by diet, hygiene and drugs. Of these the Hist two are preferable and could be adopted on a wide and national scale. This would be true dental hygiene. If unhygienic teeth were popularly regarded as social and financial disabilities, as indeed they are, the demand for preventive measures would soon come from the people themselves.”