Dentistry for Children

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 12, 1908

Dentistry for Children

At the Children’s Aid Society’s industrial school in West Fifty-third Street, Manhattan, a dental clinic has been provided, where any school-child of Greater New York who can not afford the luxury of a dentist can go and have aching teeth attended to. Dr. H. L. Wheeler, of the committee on physical welfare of school-children, has organized a staff of twenty dentists, who have volunteered their services in this attempt to provide competent dental treatment specifically for school-children.

A little more than a year ago the New York Throat, Nose, and Lung Hospital opened a dental clinic for schoolchildren in connection with its regular dental clinic, and has a staff of ten dentists, who have treated on an average from ten to twelve children daily. Other clinics where dental treatment was given have treated schoolchildren along with the regular applicants for attention, but the clinic at the Fifty-third Street School represents the first attempt at a clinic that will care exclusively for the teeth of schoolchildren.

This movement is the result of an awakening to the fact that a large percentage of public schoolchildren’s teeth are in a wretched condition, and that such condition has a decided influence on their mental activity. This awakening is chiefly the result of the investigations of the committee on physical welfare of schoolchildren, which was formed in March of 1906, and which, since its organization, has made some vital investigations into the physical conditions of New York’s schoolchildren, and has entered upon work that is already beginning to show big results.

One medical inspector in the city schools announced that ninety per cent of the children he examined have some serious defect of eye, ear, nose, or throat. It is only recently that people are beginning to realize that so-called small troubles with the teeth and throat, nose and eye, have close relation to the general health of the child. An aching tooth, a few cavities in the teeth of children, have been looked upon with little thought by parents to whom dentist bills are not reckoned in the regular expenses, and the small ills have been neglected, with no thought that bad teeth render the child more liable to any infection, that they interfere with the mastication of food, and bring on indigestion and malnutrition, retarding the physical and mental activity of the child, and seriously interfering with the benefits of his schooling.

In inaugurating this movement to care for the teeth of schoolchildren, New York is following the lead of Germany. In various cities of that country for the past few years there have been dental clinics that cared for the teeth of children without charge. Extensive investigations have been made into the condition of schoolchildren, and the percentage of diseased teeth found to be alarmingly high.

In Berlin ninety per cent of the children were found to have defective teeth. In a Brookline, Mass., public school a year or two ago, investigations were made into the dental conditions of the children and out of seven hundred children examined, two hundred fifty-five were reported to have bad teeth, one hundred seventy-nine fair, and only one hundred sixty-six good teeth.

At Andover, Mass., a comparison was made between the children with good teeth and children with bad teeth, and those with good molars were found to outweigh the children with bad teeth by an average of two pounds and seven ounces. The examining dentist advised that all grammar-school children be examined yearly by a dentist, and that there should be short talks on the proper care and treatment of the teeth, which should be supplemented by talks from the teachers.—Brooklyn Eagle.