TEETH AND RICKETS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—As " Crusader " described some of my work in your paper I venture to place before you my conclusions which are that we shall never stem the tide of maternal mortality and of our numberless C3 and mental defectives until we make normal maternity our ideal.
The work I have been doing leads me to conclude that the following conditions are signs of the same disease all through. First stage : A bad tooth indicating defective calcification accompanied by softness of bone and mild rickets. Second stage : change in shape of pelvis from round 0 to oval 0, making childbirth dangerous for mother and child. Third stage : Deformity so advanced as to be hopeless (as regards the pelvis) and changes in legs known as rickets.
What is to be done ? The first signs of tooth decay in a child under 15 show there is not enough light on the skin to form Vitamin D which controls calcification. Children usually begin to have decayed teeth when they go to school, and all the precious sunlit hours are spent indoors. (See Carnegie Report on Maternal Mortality, 1915.) So much as regards maternity and the future of the race.
Rickets is a disease which affects boys as much if not more. One wonders how the miserable little overclothed boys one sees with their pasty faces and decayed teeth, their adenoids and their tonsils, will ever grow up into useful men. They don't. Their skeleton also suffers and their hollow backs tell the same story of soft bones and pelvic distortion before their legs bend.
Has anyone ever seen a really first-rate athlete with false teeth ? Dental decay during the years of growth means arrested skeletal development and the sooner this is recognized the better. Both the good mother and the good athlete are known by their teeth.—I am, Sir, &c.,
KATHLEEN VAT:CHAN.
University Woolen's Club, 2 Audley Square, South Audley Street, 1P.1.
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