Why I Just Made a Dental Appointment
One of the great things about my job is that I get to purchase and take care of old medical books. It's fascinating to read the prose of 17th and 18th century writers no matter the subject. I recently ordered "A treatise on the disorders and deformities of the teeth and gums..." by Thomas Berdmore, London, 1770. Here's what he says at the beginning about taking care of your teeth:
"The oratory of the pulpit and bar, and above all the art of pleasing in conversation and social life, are matters of the highest concern to individuals. But in these no one can excel whose loss of teeth, or rotten livid stumps, and fallen lips and hollow cheeks, destroy articulation, and the happy expression of the countenance; whose voice has lost its native tone, and whose laugh, instead of painting joy and merriment, expresses only defect and disease.
“A foulness of the teeth is by some people as little regarded as it is easily removed; but with the fair sex, with polite and elegant part of the world, it is looked on as a certain mark of nastiness and sloth; not only because it disfigures one the greatest ornaments of the countenance, but also because the smell imparted to the breath by dirty rotting teeth, is generally disagreeable to the patients themselves, and sometimes extremely offensive to others in close conversation.”
So that’s why I just made a dental appointment.
"The oratory of the pulpit and bar, and above all the art of pleasing in conversation and social life, are matters of the highest concern to individuals. But in these no one can excel whose loss of teeth, or rotten livid stumps, and fallen lips and hollow cheeks, destroy articulation, and the happy expression of the countenance; whose voice has lost its native tone, and whose laugh, instead of painting joy and merriment, expresses only defect and disease.
“A foulness of the teeth is by some people as little regarded as it is easily removed; but with the fair sex, with polite and elegant part of the world, it is looked on as a certain mark of nastiness and sloth; not only because it disfigures one the greatest ornaments of the countenance, but also because the smell imparted to the breath by dirty rotting teeth, is generally disagreeable to the patients themselves, and sometimes extremely offensive to others in close conversation.”
So that’s why I just made a dental appointment.
posted by unca | 2:24 PM
2 Comments:
Well, Mamacita, I'm glad you like the post and it's interesting you should mention the previous dental post by someone who's name I won't mention but whose initials are Mamacita. In fact, that book had been sitting on a table next to my desk for a couple of weeks and I read that passage about a week ago and decided to put it on the old blog but just now got around to it. It may be that Mamacita's post caused an unconscious reminder to do what I had decided to do several days ago but I'll leave that to the learned minds in Vienna.
Wow, It’s kind of neat to think this was written six years before the Declaration of Independence. I like the style of the writing back then. Even when describing something like rotten teeth it reads almost like poetry. Cool post Unca.
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