the circumstances. And, we can truly, with pleasure, accord to him gentlemanliness, scholarship and profundity of erudition, especially in his department, and, too, the faculty of communicating it to his class. Dr. C. C. Parker, of the class of '50, was then our Demonstrator of Anatomy. If I forget not, he was rather small of stature, and apparently physically delicate, and yet, withal, efficient in his department, and complaisant in his demeanor among the students under his supervision and instruction. A number of pleasant memories, that occurred in his department, might be mentioned, but for fear of trespassing upon your time we forbear to do so. The number of the entire enrollment of students of that year, I do not now know. The number who graduated, I believe, was 42. There had been, all along, 44 in the class anticipating that delicious bonum magnum, until after they severally emerged from behind the curtains of the green room where they underwent their grinding, or sublimation process, when lo and behold, there were only 42. Two were impalpably pulverized, or perhaps, more modernly putting it, cremated. Whether they ever again, in after years, medically, Phenix-like, arose from their ashes, this deponent could not say. It is hoped they did, and will live to as great an age as that fabulous bird is reputed to have lived. Many of the class of '54, with whom I was then familiar, are as unknown to me to-day, so far as their locality and reputation is concerned, as though I had never seen them; but, then it is very gratifying that those I do know and have heard from are doing well. Some have become stars of the first magnitude. We see one shining in the firmament of the Ohio Medical College as its Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. We see, also, another in the firmament of the Board of Censors of this institution. And so, doubtless, we could see others of the class, if we had a good eminence to look from and knew just where to look towards. We come now to the end, and finish up by saying: No doubt each succeeding class entertains as high an opinion of themselves as the class of '54, and cherishes as warm a regard for and passes as great a eulogy upon the several members of their faculty. And we, as alumni, to-day, doubtless, are all willing to concede that the faculty, existing before and since, down through all the intervening years, embracing the present one, were and are equally, if not more meritorious, both in physique, mentality and culture; in short, possessing every quality necessary to enter into the proper make-up of an acceptable and successful professor of an honored and honorable medical institution, of which we are the humble and at the same time proud representatives. DENTAL DIETETICS AND ITS RELATION TO THE TEETH. W. I. THAYER, D. D. S., M. D., BROOKLYN, n. y. The profession is beginning to pay more attention to dietetics than formerly. Phthisis is more successfully combated, where tissue building, by the aid of nitrogenous foods is brought in to combat tissue wasting. Fight the microbes, if any, by building up the enfeebled tissue faster than it can be melted down. The teeth are composed of-in gross-two substances, soft solids and calcareous salts. Human teeth decay much more rapidly than formerly. Why? Because they have been deprived of their hardening compounds, viz. the calcareous salts! This has been done mainly by the kind of bread foods that have been partaken of. All of our cereals are so constructed as to be rich in carbonate and phosphate of lime; but the fashion now-a-days, is to throw this portion away, and give it to the cattle and swine. It is the outside of all of our cereal foods that we ought to retain, and use the meal product of our cereals instead of the bolted production. If we will do this, then we will furnish the growing teeth with a pabulum whereby the soft solids of tooth structure can fill in their interstices with good inorganic substances that will make the teeth hard and strong, able to resist a greater number of disintegrating influences. When ought this treatment to begin? Immediately with the mother as soon as conception has taken place, for the teeth begin to form as early as the sixth week. Then, when the fetus has been born, furnish it with pabulum, rich in calcareous matter. If fed upon human milk, the mother or nurse should partake of no bread foods that are not constructed out of the coarse or unbolted product of the corn, rye, oats or wheat that may be used. Corn meal, rye meal, oat meal, wheat meal; these are the chief sources from which the calcareous matter is to be derived. It has been so arranged in this form of food by the Almighty, that the calcareous salts are liberally supplied and of easy digestion and appropriation. There is no other food where a normal supply of earthy matter can be obtained. But all babies cannot have good breast milk; what can be done for them? Good cow's milk is fairly good in nitrogenous matter, but contains too much and too tough casein for all infantile digestive apparatus. This is all right if the nurse will partly pre-digest it with pancreatine, but are they capable of so doing? A resort to artificial foods is had by many. Now, there are some eight different infant foods in the market, and I have found on analysis made by Prof. Stutzer, of Bonn, Germany, and published in the Pharmaceut. Cent. Halle, Berlin, 1886, which I desire to submit for examination. Salts and inorganic con stituents.... Amount of nitrogen in protein substances.... Amount of protein substances readily digestible.... Proportion of nitrogenous alimentary substances; protein I. Inorganic constituents contain. Lime Phosphoric 5.00 4.66 0.50 2.19 0.60 1.27 2.37 0.80 8.76 12.38 10.73 18.22 11.46 8.34 9.05 11.30 6.14 5.34 7.76 6.52 5.75 2.99 1.75 3.53 2.26 2.76 0.48 1.95 0.37 2.915 1.833 1.335 1.448 1.809 1.403 1.981 1.717 16.45 11.09 7.38 8.35 10.85 7.97 11.20 9.55 1:4.4 1:7:7 1:9.6 1:9.2 1:7.1 1:9.3 1:6.6 1:7.7 0.645 0.390 0.155 0.390 0.060 0.060 0.520 0.001 Acid.... 0.874 0.630 0.583 0.688 0.421 0.260 0.800 0.167 The amount of protein substances in Nestle's Food is insufficient, being only 11.46 per cent., and the relative proportion between nitrogenous and other essential elements is, for instance, only 1.75 per cent. of inorganic salts, and of lime 0.390, and phosphoric acid only 0.640 per cent. This is a poor food for the petrous tissue, but not as bad as Mellin's in the last two constituents, or Horlick's, Dr. Ridges', and the last column. Carnrick's Soluble Food is the easiest digesting food of the eight, represented by 16.45 per cent. This is an important item for every infantile digestive apparatus, and especially in cases of cholera infantum, bowel lesions, marasmus. This food is by far the best general tissue builder. It has the largest amount of nitrogenous substances, being the highest, 18.22 per cent., while one runs as low as 8.34. But it is for the petrous tissues-teeth-that we plead. In Carnrick's Soluble Food we find that the tooth-building pabulum is 2.99 per cent., with the largest proportion of lime-0.645—and phosphoric acid-0.874-of any of the foods. One of the foods has only 0.001 of lime, and 0.167 per cent. of phosphoric acid. It is during the formation of the teeth, while they are growing, that the greatest amount of calcareous matter can be packed in and between the soft solids. Human teeth, in a large sense, are built up once for all. Hence the best results are obtained by furnishing the right kind of building material. If starch is the best, then feed starch. If cellulose is what is needed, then it is wise to furnish a good supply of this pabulum. Carnrick's Soluble Food is the only one free from cellulose. The writer has given this subject of dietetics, as applied to petrous tissue building, considerable attention for many years, and he has never been able to find so good a substitute for mother's milk as he has in this Soluble Food. It is of the highest importance that every tissue should be supplied, and especially the teeth. But we want nitrogenous and albuminoid substances and hydro carbons, but of the latter we must have it in the form of dextrine and not malt sugar, Malt and cane sugars are so apt to ferment in an infant's stomach that they should be little used. As everyone knows, if starches are converted into dextrin, they cannot ferment or pass through the intestinal tract partly digested. cent. Look at each column. Some of these foods are almost devoid of fat, and some will digest with the greatest difficulty. Some of these foods have a very large, a too large, per cent, of starch. These hydro-carbons, in some of these foods, run as high as 76.69, 78.44, 79.29, and 80.45 per In no case should there be present, of the starchy elements, over from 68 to 70 per cent. Then again, there can be no question but that these starches have been converted into dextrine by baking them some eight hours at a temperature of 350° Fahrenheit. If the conversion of starch is carried beyond dextrine and into a malt sugar, it is almost sure to ferment in the child's stomach before it passes this viscus and enters the duodenum. The amyolytic ferments found in the pancreatic and intestinal juices readily convert dextrine into soluble sugar, which can be, in fact is, ready to be taken up and appropriated. Starch, as dextrine, has had no chance to ferment. Some of these foods have, as we have said before, a very large proportion of starch. There are three of these foods that are known as "milk foods,'t Carnrick's Soluble Food, Nestle's and Anglo-Swiss. But there is a vas' difference between them in easy digestion, and what we are particularly interested in is their ability to supply lime and phosphoric acid—the phosphate of lime is about 12 times greater in tooth structure than is the carbonate of lime-marble-for the petrous tissues. Carnrick's food is the richest in calcareous salts. If the reader will refer to some of his acquaintances, who while young were brought up almost wholly on the meal products of the cereal food, partaken of with liberal regularity, he will find that my statements, resolved into solid facts, brush the cobwebs of supposed theory into noth. ingness. I can produce a physician in this town, about 40 years old, whose mother lived as has been suggested above, and the boy and man fed on the whole of the grain, who can exhibit as beautiful, regular and flint-like dental organs as ever graced the oral cavity of any human being. It is within the province of every physician to so direct the feeding of his young patients as to insure strong, flint-like teeth through life, if he will but take a little pains to thoroughly post the parents on the necessity of continued meal product feeding for the first twenty years of the young patient's life. I wish to speak again of the great importance of the mother's partaking of the coarser varieties of bread foods. Whatever she eats of these foods, let the bread be constructed out of the whole of the grain. Some pregnant women do not eat any cereal food, having a distaste for it, yet did they fully understand the importance of furnishing the "inorganic constitutents" for the growing teeth to build with, they would soon remedy this serious defect in their food. All children, from one year up, even as late as the thirtieth year, should partake liberally of the coarser bread foods. No bread, or food of any kind, should be allowed upon the table that had been made out of the bolted product of any of the grains. Oat meal, almost exclusively, should be given the younger portion of one's family for the morning meal. Then for the other meals through the day that form of bread as suggested above. It is within the province of every physician to almost invariably insure a good and serviceable set of dental organs for his young and growing patients, and overcome in a large degree any hereditary tendency to frail, soft and rapidly decaying teeth. 89 SOUTH PORTLAND AVE. |