Common disorders and diseases of childhood / by George Frederic Still.

  • Still, G. Frederic (George Frederic), Sir, 1868-1941.
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Common disorders and diseases of childhood / by George Frederic Still. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/1056 (page 9)
    Disorders associated with dentition. Teething as an ex¬ planation of symptoms is too often a cloak for ignorance, but I would protest against the tendency nowadays to assume that because dentition is a physiological process therefore it is incapable of causing disturbance of health: pregnancy is a physiological process, but I suppose no one would deny that pregnancy may disturb the health in many ways. It has been said that teething produces nothing but teeth. I venture to think that there is more wit than truth in this : and, at the risk of being considered old-fashioned and unscientific, I shall mention some of the disorders to which in my opinion teething may give rise. I admit the difficulty of proof ; we all know that coincidences are apt to be mistaken for cause and effect, but I am not inclined to disregard the accumulated experience of generations of intelligent parents, and still less the observations of skilled observers, w'ho affirm without hesitation that dentition may cause certain disturbances of health. How it causes these disturbances may be doubtful : knowing how profoundly nervous influence can modify the functions of most organs in the body, I see nothing improbable in the supposition that some of the disorders produced by dentition may be due to reflex nervous disturbance; and I am the more inclined to think so when I see, as I sometimes do, an infant who has become ‘ nervous ’, with occasional twitching, rolling his eyes up, and giving a short sharp cry, and clearly being on the verge of convulsions, whilst the gum is swollen and tense over a coming tooth, whereas no sooner has the tooth come through than all these symptoms rapidly subside. If such excitability of the nervous system can be pro¬ duced, as I think it undoubtedly can, by dentition, I see no reason why the transient bronchial catarrh, or the slight looseness of the bowels which recurs in some infants with the eruption of the teeth, may not be due to nervous influence. Certainly there is nothing more improbable in this view than in the supposition that an infant who has been sucking a ‘ dummy’ or living on a particular food for weeks or months without dis¬ turbance of health, should suddenly develop symptoms of dis¬ order from these sources, coincidently with the eruption of a tooth, and then, after losing these symptoms directly the tooth is cut, should develop them again when another tooth is cut, and all this without dentition playing any part in the pro¬ duction of the symptoms. I am well aware that there are infants who cut their teeth without the slightest disturbance of health, but when I am told that dentition cannot disturb the health, B 2