SALIVARY INHIBITION AND DENTAL CARIES

¹ Research Department, Upper Iowa University, Lafayette, Iowa

1 Under natural conditions, the body has a mechanism which eliminates transforms, or kills many types of pathogenic organisms.

2. Within recent years, civilized human beings have encountered an environmental factor which makes caries acuta an almost universal disease and concomitantly reduces the effectiveness of the bactericidal and bacteriostatic mechanism of the saliva.

3. Sucrose, because of its inhibitory action on bacteria and the resultant mutations, is probably the most important environmental factor which has interfered with functioning of the oral autarcetic immunity mechanism.

4. It is suggested that the high incidence of scarlet fever, diphtheria, dental caries, appendicitis, and other diseases of civilized man might be partially explained by the difference, bacteriologically, which exists between modern and primitive communities.

5. A diet is given which eliminates from the basal flora the mucus-producing streptococci, arrests dental caries, and, by stimulating the inhibitory principles of Muhlenbach, tends to enhance the autarcetic immunity mechanism.