school-room, therefore, for instilling into the mind of youth the necessity for cleanliness of the teeth and mouth?

In enumerating the reasons for introducing dental hygiene into the schools I do not here dwell upon the element of beauty, of which the teeth are so important a requisite; nor do I emphasize the importance of perfect and regular teeth as a means of correct articulation. In view of the startling facts recently brought to light concerning the deplorable condition of the teeth among our younger generation, any exposition of the esthetic side of the question would seem almost superfluous.

The public investigations conducted abroad during the past years demonstrate that the almost increditable condition of the children's teeth everywhere is not due solely to neglect, but also to heredity - an additional reason for the timely exercise of hygienic safeguards. Most of the statistics furnished are those of school children, and should, therefore, have particular significance for us.

Dr. Jessen reports the astounding fact that out of a total of 100,000 school children from the different German states from 81 to 99 per cent were found to have diseased teeth, and that practically only 1 per cent had normal, healthy mouths. The examinations of the teeth of the school children of the city of Berlin showed, according to Dr. Ritter, that 90 per cent had defective dentures.

Among 10,517 school children of about twelve years of age, examined by Cunningham in England and Scotland, 35,279 carious teeth were found; only about 1,500 of these children, or approximately 14 per cent, having sound teeth.

At another time out of 15,000 school children between the ages of six and fifteen, 95 per cent showed the presence of dental caries. The report states that 372 anomalies of a different character were found, such as hare-lip, cleft palate, irregularities, V-shaped jaw and the like.

It was in barbarous Russia that dental investigations were conducted as early as 1879, with the result that 80 per cent of the inhabitants of St. Petersburg were found to have defective or decayed teeth. Is it not an object lesson for us, the people of Boston, that, in 1897, the pedagogical council

of the college of that far distant city of Batoum should already have provided that the scholars' teeth should be regularly examined by dentists? In the higher military schools of Russia dental offices have been established, where every available means is employed to preserve organs which are there considered of the most vital importance to health. In 1896 Russian dentists went so far as to formally petition the Minister of the Interior to organize a regular department of dental hygiene throughout the empire. A striking proof of the estimate in which teeth are held in Russia was recently furnished by the Civil Court of St. Petersburg, which awarded the extraordinary sum of $50,000 to a singer for the loss of five teeth in a railway accident. If these things can be done in Russia, why can't they be done in the United States where the need is far greater?

The overcrowding of the school course has been urged as an objection in certain quarters, both as regards dental examinations and the far more important matter of instruction in dental hygiene.

One city claims that dental examinations would furnish a precedent for others aiming at the establishment of the physical condition of other organs. Why, then, let me ask, have these examinations been introduced into Russia, Germany, Japan, England, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark? In face of the statisitcs revealed abroad and the far worse conditions known to exist in many portions of this country, such a plea as the above is preposterous. Despite these occasional objections, however, the movement on behalf of dental examinations is steadily progressing, as evidenced by the fact that even that far western city of Spokane, Washington, has recently appointed nine dentists to examine the teeth of the school children of the city.

As regards the school curriculum itself, the question becomes one of the relative importance of studies. The Board of Education of New York City recognizing the pressure of the times, and realizing the tremendous importance of subjects of immediate utility, has recently made a number of salutary changes, making room, for example, for stenography and other branches designed to enable the pupil on leaving school to obtain a livelihood.

Deeper than the question of utilities, however, and underlying it, is that affecting the future well-being of the individual; and there is no factor deeper, nor more fundamental in this regard, than that bearing upon the preservation of the teeth. To this end the school must coöperate with the family; and, inasmuch as it has been here convincingly demonstrated by statistics that the family cannot be relied upon to safeguard what may, perhaps, be considered as one of the most vital physical functions, it devolves upon the school to inculcate the principles of dental hygiene.

The knowledge the public receives of dentistry and the benefits it confers are gained largely from grossly misleading advertisements of the dental parlors.

I have seen some children's mouths that at the ages of six, seven, and eight, looked more like cesspools than receptacles for the transmission of nourishment to the human body.

There is also another source of danger to children in the exchanging of pencils and chewing gum, which, after being in mouths mixed with pus, are placed in the mouths of other innocent and unsuspecting children.

A finger tip wet with pus from an ulcerating tooth and rubbed in the eye will undoubtedly produce inflammatory diseases of the eye, as the wetting of book leaves by the fingers may carry contagion to another.

A woman's neglected mouth - an accumulation of calculi and débris, cavities in profusion, teeth opaque and lusterless, gums all bleeding and sore a foul, filthy, repulsive, and dangerous mouth an approach to a disease, loathsome, horrible, maybe incurable - prince of oral diseases; cheeks sunken and innocent of color, eyes lusterless, languid and wan; and through this mouth passes nourishment for this mother and her child!

Girls whose teeth are defective will in a few years be the mothers of the next generation. What about the claims of their children, unless we now do our duty by the future mothers, and give them a chance to grow up as healthy women? Dr. D. Hayes Agnew said, "The world is becoming filled with a class of flat-breasted, spindle-limbed young women, unfitted for the varied responsible functions. of womanhood; qualifications, too, which under a different

regimen and directed into proper channels would exert a most potential influence on all the great social and moral problems of the age.'

Here, then, we have a number of reasons why special instructions on the care of the teeth and mouth should constitute a permanent feature of our school curriculum, even though such instruction be limited to a brief reading lesson of half an hour two or three times a week.

It is in the school-room that the future American is formed. Here all the heterogenous elements of our population are assembled; and here their entire education is supervised and controlled by the properly constituted authorities. That such a course would react beneficently upon the home itself is also beyond question. The mind of the childprovided that instruction be properly given is far more receptive than that of the adult; and while lectures are productive of much good, they only reach a comparatively small part of the population, whereas a course in oral hygiene would permanently affect our entire generation.

Is it not the duty of the school to arouse society to intelligent thought on the importance of better modes of life? Is it not the duty of the school to train people to live better

is not this the true purpose of the school? The logical place to begin this is with the physical life of society — the one phase of life that has been most ignored by our educational methods.

There is still a weighter reason for legal insistence upon proper instruction in the care of teeth at school. Many thousands of dollars are expended each year for systems of school ventilation. The people cheerfully bear this burden of expense because they are convinced of the need of keeping the air of rooms in which children are brought together as pure as possible. But strangely enough school authorities have thus far overlooked the important fact that the pestiferous odors issuing from neglected mouths are rendering the problem of ventilation almost impossible of solution. How much money - and what is greater, how much health might be saved by intelligent attention to the laws of dental hygiene?

It should not be difficult to impress teachers with the dangers which attend the exudation of pus from decaying

teeth. In every community there are those who are enthusiasts on the subject of pure and wholesome food, but whose mouths are in such neglected conditions that the air which passes through them is polluted, and every mouthful of food swallowed carries bacteria with it into the stomach. The almost entire futility of sterilizing articles of diet for patients in whose mouths chronic abscesses exist or whose teeth are covered with tartar mixed with mucous and food in a state of decomposition, need hardly be mentioned.

People are at first prone to say that public supervision of children's physical welfare smacks of paternalism, and parents bristle with resentment at this action. But further thought carries with it the conviction that the physical detriment of school children no more savors of paternalism than does their mental betterment.

The school teacher's task is universally acknowledged to be an arduous one, but his or more often her labors would be manifestly lightened were all pupils bright and none stupid.

The examination of the eyes of school children, now so commonly enforced, has brought to the front bench pupils who on the back seat seemed stupid. Likewise the deaf pupils, after examination, given as it is now in many public schools throughout the country, these deaf boys and girls, I say, have been made to hear. But, gentlemen, these cases only affect the individual student, while an unclean mouth vitiates the atmosphere of the whole room and is the most direct means of spreading contagion. The best mental results cannot be accomplished in a body weakened by any indigestion, any mal-assimilation of nutriment, any excess of the waste of indigestion.

We are all convinced, as dental surgeons of experience, that the money invested in providing healthy mouths in the rising generation, and instilling in the public mind the principles of personal dental hygiene will be saved tenfold in money now invested annually in general hospitals and other sanitary institutions where the diseases treated can in a large proportion of cases be traced directly to nervous and other disorders resulting directly from defective dentures, and that dental treatment early in life prevents more diseases in after life than any other prophylactic measure taken by govern