, upon the use of soap with the
tooth-brush. My own experience and the experience of members of my
family is highly favorable to the regular morning and evening use of
soap. Castile or other good soap will answer this purpose. (Whatever is
good for the hands and face is good for the teeth.) The slightly
unpleasant taste which soap has when we begin to use it will soon be
unnoticed.
TOOTH POWDERS.--Many persons, while laudably attentive to the
preservation of their teeth, do them harm by too much officiousness.
They daily apply to them some dentifrice powder, which they rub so
hard as not only to injure the enamel by excessive friction, but
to hurt the gums even more than by the abuse of the toothpick. The
quality of some of the dentifrice powders advertised in newspapers is
extremely suspicious, and there is reason to think that they are not
altogether free from a corrosive ingredient. One of the safest
and best compositions for the purpose is a mixture of two parts of
prepared chalk, one of Peruvian bark, and one of hard soap, all finely
powdered, which is calculated not only to clean the teeth without
hurting them, but to preserve the firmness of the gums.
Besides the advantage of sound teeth for their use in mastication,
a proper attention to their treatment conduces not a little to the
sweetness of the breath. This is, indeed, often affected by other
causes existing in the lungs, the stomach, and sometimes even in the
bowels, but a rotten state of the teeth, both from the putrid smell
emitted by carious bones and the impurities lodged in their cavities,
never fails of aggravating an unpleasant breath wherever there is a
tendency of that kind.
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