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The Local Work
Published in The Dental Summary, Vol. XXX, No. 6, June 1910, pp. 560-563.
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Mr. President, Members of the Board of Education, Boards of our Public Institutions, ladies and Gentlemen: As I address this large and very intelligent, and therefore critical audience, my responsibility is very great, but it is not so great as the responsibility of any one of you teachers who go to your classes on Monday morning to instruct them with the interpretation of the Book of Life and Health. You notice that beautiful class of fifty boys. Do you realize that if they grow up as the average man of the past decade has done, by the time they are thirty not half of them would be accepted by Uncle Sam to even do post duty in the army, because they would not have teeth good enough to pass the examination. Do you shudder? When, and when only, could those teeth be saved? Only when they have them, only when they are children, and there is your responsibility! For their fathers and their mothers do not know the responsibility and you do! And I want to say to you that just as the “pen is mightier than the sword,” so the tooth-brush is mightier than the dental profession; and if those children can only be taught that great necessity, that great lesson, while they are young, you have given them a legacy that is greater to them than to give them a thousand dollars in gold.
A decade ago, when this Committee of The Cleveland Dental Society undertook to bring this matter to the Board of Education, the then superintendent, Mr. Jones, said to us, “I am in sympathy with your work, but alas, politics and public sentiment will not allow me to take it into the schools.” He said further, “I would give five thousand dollars today if somebody had taught me, when I was a child, how and why I should save my teeth.” And you have that privilege to teach every boy and girl in your classes that great truth. Some day a young man will come to you and he will say, “I am indebted to you five thousand dollars for telling me how and why I should take care of my teeth.” (Laughter.) How many boys in the school room? You will have a great legacy for your old age!
If you would go with me to the museums in Colorado City and look over with me the skulls of the cliff dwellers, you would be appalled to find not one instance of decay of the teeth in any one of the skulls of that collection–at least that was the case last summer! What does it mean? Our civilization, that is growing up today, cannot produce one man in five hundred with such a set of teeth as that collection shows. Do you realize that in that institution, that Dr. Grady serves, only two per cent of the men that apply for entrance to that Academy do not require dental attention before they may enter. This generation, and to the great alarm of this entire community it should be, has not anything like the good teeth of that former generation. Think you that those Norsemen, who pushed the keels of their vessels up onto the sands of Ebbsfleet to make that great Briton, could only furnish one man in ten with a set of good teeth, which is the best that the men of today can, or of those early colonists, that came to our shores, those sturdy men, that they could only furnish one man in twenty with a tolerably good set of teeth?
I want to say to you that the responsibility upon you, as the educators, is alarming, and The Cleveland Dental Society has had this work in their hearts and in their hands for a long time, and they are now going to co-operate with you and help you reach this great mass of humanity, the children, and the method is very simple. The examination blanks, such as you have in your hands, when they are made out, will be sent with the pupil to the parent by the examiner, with the request that the parent have the indicated necessary service attended to. There will be another slip put into your hands which will state, “I, the undersigned parent, am not able financially to take care of the teeth of my child, and I will appreciate the service of the free clinic.” The signature of the parent and teacher are the credential for the free service of the dental clinics.
If you only knew how many times you lost your temper because those children were so irritable, just because they themselves were poisoned with something that you in this age might remedy, you would take heart interest in this work.
Just a few days ago a mother brought her little boy to me and said, “you needn’t do anything to his temporary teeth, just fix the permanent ones,” as he had four permanent ones, because he was six years of age when she said, “Don’t do anything with the temporary teeth.” I said, “Do you see this suppuration?–it is abscessed. You are not going to leave it this way?” She said, “That will not hurt him any.” I said, “You watch your child, if you are going to keep that condition there, and see if his rest has rested him, and if he isn’t quarrelsome and irritable when playing with his fellows, and loses his patience, perhaps has headache, perhaps acute indigestion; if he has any of these symptoms, beware, for you will get them from that much infection, for I want you to know that almost any abscessed tooth will furnish from half an ounce to one ounce of pus every twenty-four hours, that either goes into the system through absorption or through the stomach.” She said, “Dr. Price, that’s just what is the matter with my boy now, he can’t play with his own brothers without quarreling all the time, the teacher can’t get along with him at school.” I treated those three abscessed teeth that day and the next week when she came back she said, “Those symptoms have entirely disappeared, he gets up rested and plays agreeably with his playmates and his digestion is regular.” I want to say that probably in every classroom in this city there are such cases as that, there are doubtless thousands in the city, Mr. President, of just such children being poisoned and being whipped and punished when really the only trouble is the septic poisoning they have to fight, and the Cleveland Dental Society has volunteered to take care of gratis, for this coming year, those children whose parents can’t afford to pay for this service.
In this system it is very important that you co-operate to the end that we have a very liberal attendance at the lectures. We have twenty lecturers from our organization going out to do this work, and I want to say in closing–to just change the words of Goldsmith a little, I would declare:
“Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where gums accumulate and teeth decay.”
Mr. President, I congratulate you as President of the Board of Education of this city, and you members of that Board, and the officers of the educational societies of this city, and parents and teachers, upon having the opportunity of furthering this good work, and in turn, I want to congratulate this generation that they have officers of your liberality of conception and character and purpose to carry out such a worthy enterprise.
I am reminded to emphasize tonight’s meeting, and I want to say to you teachers that you will thank me for urging you, if you will come tonight and hear Dr. Evans in the splendid address he will give in tracing septic poisoning through the system and the effect upon a young life. You cannot afford to miss it. (Applause.)