10. Gunpowder Or Toothpowder
Why are the English, admittedly the apostles of the tub, so indifferent, as a rule, to the condition of their teeth? If they would do only an infinitesimal bit as much for their preservation as they do for the preservation of their monuments, it might possibly have a momentous influence on English history.
Why the inside of a man's mouth should be of no importance compared to his outer man is a riddle; but so it is, and a man who would feel quite disgraced to be seen with dirty hands, leaves his teeth in a condition which is quite appalling. If, as it is said, bad teeth are a sign of the degeneracy of a race, then are the sturdy English in a very bad way, and melancholy indeed is their deterioration since the days of their ancestors of that prehistoric age whose relics are found in Cornwall and Somerset.
It is a comfort to learn that not only common sense, but vanity, is as old as the hills, for among those ancient remains were found some rouge, and a mirror, all of which can be verified in the museum at Glastonbury. My heart went out to the prehistoric lady who used the rouge; it brought her very near with its suggestion of frailty and feminine vanity, and I am quite sure that the mirror as well was her property. I lingered over the rouge, the mirror, a tooth, a prehistoric safety-pin, and some needles, and let the others bother themselves about such really unimportant details as weapons and utensils. As I strolled on I saw a skull two thousand years older than any recorded history, and it grinned cheerfully at me with as perfect a set of teeth as ever rejoiced the heart of a dentist. I could not help thinking what a shabby exhibition we should make in similar circumstances!
There is no doubt that our over-civilisation deteriorates our teeth, which is proved whenever prehistoric remains are discovered. The last were, I believe, found in Cornwall by a lucky man who bought a strip of land, or, properly, sand, on which to build himself a cottage, and, on proceeding to dig a cellar, found it already occupied by the remains of prehistoric human beings. Some of the skeletons were still in the same curious attitude in which they had been buried, and the superior ones among them (socially!) had the right sides of their skulls smashed in to prevent the restless spirit from seeking re-admittance.
It was the most melancholy sight in the world, these bones which even the alchemy of thousands of years had not resolved into merciful dust. The immortal skeleton was there nearly intact, while brilliant, as if brushed that very morning, grinned those splendid prehistoric teeth, white as the kernel of a nut, impervious to decay.
A big glass case against the wall of the little museum, which has been built on the spot by the fortunate discoverer of the "bones," was full of carefully preserved teeth which had been found there, and their beauty and perfection would have rejoiced the heart of that artist in teeth
par excellence, the American dentist.
The room was crowded by middle-class excursionists, who, with a middle-class joy of horrors, even if prehistoric, in default of anything fresher, stared round-eyed at the skeletons, skulls, shinbones and other impedimenta of decease, and I was struck by the solemnity and dignity of those poor old bones compared to the commonplaceness of the empty faces gazing at them.
"Oh, I say, don't you wish you had them teeth," I heard a young thing in a scarlet tam o'shanter and a fringe giggle to the youth by her side, with an imitation panama tilted back from his receding forehead. I understood the gentle innuendo, as he promptly stuck his cane into his mouth and sucked.
There was something very magnificent and tragic in those lonely graves of a humanity, already extinct when ancient history began, resting under the roll of the Cornish sand dunes, where the sullen cliffs stand sentinels against the seas. Until the twentieth century they had rested forgotten, and then an undignified chance betrayed them.
It was a gold mine for the enterprising proprietor, whose moderate charge for a sight is only threepence a head. He is a man of engaging humour, and he is not only on intimate terms with his "bones," but with the eminent scientists who still wage a bitter but bloodless feud over the remains, whose biography so far is only written in sand.
That he is not only a cheerful but a witty man is greatly to his credit, for he lives a lonely life on his sand hills, with only the cliffs as his neighbours and the roar of the ocean and the whistle of the wind to break the silence. For labour he excavates his graveyard, and for relaxation he catalogues his bones. His free and easy comments on his subject (or subjects, rather) are really very exhilarating to the philosophic tourist, and indeed it was he who first drew my attention to the deterioration of English teeth.
The eccentricity of the Early Victorian teeth was for decades the pet subject of the Continental caricaturist, the peculiarity being generally ascribed to the British female, her male companion merely rejoicing in hideous plaids, abnormal side-whiskers, and a fearful helmet decorated with a flowing puggaree. Times have changed. The British teeth have ceased to protrude, and, indeed, they now veer around to the other extreme, and instead of prominent front teeth the Englishman now often rejoices in no front teeth at all, or between none and the ordinary number nature intends there are countless variations.
I have been waiting for a genial caricaturist to seize on this simple and unostentatious national trait. If bad teeth are a common sign of ill-health, then alas for the English masses who form the strength of the nation, for their neglected teeth are a menace and a warning.
There is no emotion in the world, except the fear of death, that will not succumb to an aching tooth. A villain with the toothache is more villainous than without it; while a lover with the toothache does not exist, for a lover with the toothache ceases to be a lover. The toothache is so exquisite a pain that it demands the undivided attention of the brain, with a persistency so nagging that no other pain enjoys. It will even wreck a man's career. What man can write a great poem or win a battle with an ulcerated tooth tearing at his nerves! Should we investigate, it will be discovered that the greatest men in the world who made history, art, and science, never had toothache, which first of all kills the imagination. Mathematicians might survive, for such imagination as they have is riveted in facts.
In addition to the other disabilities, toothache is undignified; there is nothing interesting or romantic about it! It is one of the first pains impartial nature bestows on her children, and which is the only common heritage that justifies that misleading clause in the American Constitution that all men are born free and equal. That pain and what was in our childhood euphoniously called "tummy ache" lead the revolt in nurseries.
There is hardly a bodily ache which literature has not idealised, but an aching tooth has yet to find its dramatic poet. In fact, there is about it a touch of the ludicrous which its concentrated anguish does not justify. It is curious that so intense a suffering should be so undramatic, but it is the one agony which does not desert us this side of the grave, and which even the genius of a Shakespeare would hesitate to bestow on his hero or heroine. Anguish comes to them in many ways, but the great poet discreetly avoids teeth.
The only historical reference to teeth I have ever noticed is when the sacred Inquisition, always original and playful, tears them one by one out of the mouths of heretics and Jews as being gently conducive to confession. But even this undoubted torture is singularly undramatic, and has, I believe, never been used by a tragic poet.
It is one of the aggravations of toothache that it inspires but lukewarm sympathy; even your parents know you will not die of it. The greatest concession to your suffering is that you may stay away from school, and, if you are very bad, mother ties a big handkerchief about your face, which is something, but not much. But even parents are strangely inconsiderate, and I realised even in my infant days that had these same sufferings been situated more favourably in my body I should have been promoted to bed and the family doctor.
A very famous American dentist met the English husband of an American friend of mine with the genial congratulation, "My dear sir, I wish you joy! You have married a first-rate, A1 set of teeth."
Possibly the tribute was too professional, but it really meant so much. Indeed, one of the most promising signs of the future of the American people is the importance they attach to good teeth. The American dentist is the greatest in the world. His deft skill constructs those delicate and complicated instruments that help him to repair the ravages of time and ill-health. Not only does he produce an exact copy of nature, but his is the only instance known to science where human ingenuity excels nature's--his teeth do not ache! It is also required of the modern dentist not only that he should be a consummate mechanic, but he must be a doctor and surgeon as well, to be able to cure the cause behind the damage.
When I see so many people here who have bad teeth--which to say the least is a blemish--it is a prophecy that the next generation will have even worse, which means a deterioration in health, therefore in intelligence and ambition. So in due course England will lose her proud position as the greatest nation in the world, simply because England would not go to the dentist; which is a curious neglect for a people whose morning tub is much less likely to be neglected than their morning prayers.
If I were one of the powers that be I should require all Board Schools to furnish their pupils with tooth-brushes and toothpowder, and the morning session should be opened with a general brushing of teeth. Not only that, but I would have a dentist attached to each school district, whose duty it should be to attend to the children's teeth free of charge. If England wants good war material (and there has been some adverse criticism of the quality of her soldiers) she must cultivate it, and it is her duty to step in where the parent fails. A day labourer with a large family does his best if he and they keep body and soul together. It is for the State to step in and rescue the young teeth from premature decay, thus undoubtedly increasing the health of the growing body, and at the same time teaching the young things those cleanly habits which make for self-respect and health.
The English have not the habit of going to the dentist; money paid to him they consider wasted--there is nothing to show for it. It is like putting new drains into the house, only not so necessary. They still have teeth taken out rather than stopped (filled), as being cheaper, and when they are all out they replace them on too slight a provocation by what American humour calls "store teeth."
Nor are the English supersensitive. Their complacency, which upholds them in more important things, inclines them to believe that if their fathers muddled along with bad teeth so can they. It does not take away, they think, from the charms of their best girl if she smiles at them with a gap in her teeth, or if in colour they shade into the darkest of greys. As for a man, he can always lie in ambush behind his moustache, or at worst he can draw down his upper lip and leave the unseen a mystery.
Still, there is hope for the future, and England shows signs of awakening! A truly progressive member of a certain board of guardians recently had the temerity to demand tooth-brushes for the pauper children. The worthy mayor who presided at the meeting was nearly paralysed at the audacity of the request. He not only sternly refused, but he denounced it as pampered luxury and extravagance, and he was so roused by the outrageous proposal that he taunted his brother guardians, and said they themselves had probably not indulged in the sinful luxury of a tooth-brush for forty-five years. Possibly, but at any rate it proves that England is really awakening, and that even an infant pauper may some day look forward to the rapture of possessing a tooth-brush!
Yet even bad teeth sometimes find their Nemesis! A very important public position was recently vacant for which there were some two hundred applicants. These slowly resolved themselves down to two--one an able man, and the other an exceptionally able man. They had to have a deciding interview with the arbiter of their fate, so great a man that he is called a personage, and he gave the position to the able man rather than the exceptionally able man. His explanation for his curious choice was quite simple, "He really had such horrid teeth that I could not bear to have him always about."
Has any historian left his testimony as to the teeth of the ancient Romans, when that great nation fell into decadence? Statues all testify that the deterioration did not affect their noses, but I feel sure that if their rigid marble lips could open we should find the first cause of their historic downfall.
As the extinction of a nation is foreordained in its very inception, so the fall of America is possibly already predestined. Well, it may be owing to trusts, but it will not be owing to teeth. All over the American land is heard the busy wheel of the dentist. Hundreds of thousands of dentists are forever filling and scraping and pulling American teeth, and the American people emerge from their dentist chairs and smile broadly, a source of joy to the beholder and not pain. They pay their dentists, if not with rapture, at least with resignation, because they know that their children will inherit good teeth, and it will be a pleasure to kiss them from their cradle on, at all stages. Nor when their young men go out to war will they be declared by the medical examiners unfit because of their bad teeth. Instead, they will clench their good teeth and fight right pluckily, as only those can who attend strictly to business, undisturbed by pain.
One hears England called the freeest republic in the world, and that here, as nowhere else, every man has his chance. Well, England may be, to all intents and purposes, a republic, but to rise from the ranks is only for the man of commanding talent, and for him there is always room at the top--everywhere--all over the world. But for the ordinary man who has ordinary abilities, and yet is not without ambition, America is the land.
He may start as a day labourer and have luck and his son may one day be President of the United States; or he may grace any one of those innumerable offices which are in the gift of a grateful party! That keeps self-respect lively in a man, and is what makes him know not only his own trade, but just a little more. How one suffers because the British workman only does what he is obliged to--and not that. How often one rebels because the subordinate English official knows just what he is obliged to know, and not a hair's breadth more! That same man set down in America will learn to the fullest extent of his intelligence.
Tooth-brushes make for health, health makes for intelligence, and it is the intelligent man the world wants and pays for; which proves the incalculable importance of tooth-brushes in the progress of the world. Possibly the atmosphere of a republic is more conducive to good teeth; but, really, England should make a supreme effort to save her waning power from falling into the grasp of the great republic, which it is inevitably bound to do if England does not go to the dentist.
In the political economy of nations the tooth-brush is of much more importance than the sword, and toothpowder is infinitely more important than gunpowder. As England never considers the millions she annually spends in gunpowder, why does she not pause in her martial career and spend a few thousand pounds in toothpowder?