Kepnuk v. Eek

The Eskimos, those scientifically invaluable little people, have long been pointed to as having fine teeth simply because they shunned the mushy diet of our milk-toast civilization. Last week Columbia University Bacteriologist Theodor Rosebury, who has been to Alaska himself, disputed this standard theory of dental decay. According to his investigations, reported at a medico-dental session of the Greater New York Dental Meeting, previous theorists had been drawing the wrong conclusions from Eskimos.

Before his trip to Alaska he had observed that many rats fed on coarsely-ground raw rice and corn developed tooth decay; but over 200 rats which had been fed soft, cooked cereals had perfect teeth. He set out to find foods in the human dietary which would correspond to the coarse corn and rice.

The Eskimos at Kepnuk, Alaska, found Dr. Rosebury, eat little besides fish and seal meat which are soft and rich in fats and proteins. They have no tooth decay. The Eskimos at Eek vary their fish and seal diet with hardtack. Many of them have decayed teeth. Dr. Rosebury became convinced that in hardtack he had found a food analogous to the coarse corn and rice. On his return to Columbia, he and his collaborators, Maxwell Karshan and Genevieve Foley, set to work feeding hardtack to more than a hundred rats, soon produced decayed teeth in many of them.

Thus an important cause of dental caries, concluded Dr. Rosebury, is not mushy, refined foods but "certain hard, compact, carbohydrate-rich foods" which become forced into the crevices of the teeth and remain there as breeding grounds for bacteria.

Another explanation for tooth decay was offered by Dr. E. F. Briggs of Bangor, Me. The parathyroids (small bean-shaped glands surrounding the thyroid) regulate the amount of calcium absorbed by the body. Emotions, claimed imaginative Dentist Briggs, influence the parathyroids. "If a young man is disappointed in love, his teeth may decay in a few months." he said. "The emotions that cause decay are those that depress. . . . Middle-aged patients who suddenly present caries (tooth decay) . . . invariably have . . . passed through a period in which they had extra work, deep anxiety or added responsibility."

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