Section I. From London Lancet, July 11, 1903
The primary object of mastication is to break up the food so as (1) to facilitate the swallowing of it, and (2), still more important, to insure its intimate admixture with the digestive juices, not only within the mouth, but throughout the entire digestive tract. Mastication has, however, other important and far-reaching effects. Thus it promotes the flow of saliva and, when properly performed, secures a due insalivation of the food; it increases the quantity of alkaline saliva passing into the stomach; it stimulates the heart and circulation; and it finally influences the nutrition of the jaws and their appendages by stimulating the local blood and lymph circulation. Now to consider these various objects and effects of mastication.
Mastication facilitates swallowing.—Many foods cannot be swallowed without first going through some preparation in the mouth. Soft, moist, pultaceous foods, such as milk pudding and porridge, can be and often, indeed, are swallowed with little or no preliminary chewing. On the other hand, it is a mechanical impossibility to swallow large lumps of tough food, or very dry food, even though, like flour, it be in a finely divided state. Dry food needs first to be well moistened; and it is not surprising that it promotes a more abundant flow of saliva than moist food, though the secretion thus excited may be poor in ferment. Hence it follows that if we desire to give foods which compel mastication, they should be tough or dry. On the whole, vegetable foods necessitate more thorough mastication than animal. The carnivora can scarcely be said to masticate at all the flesh which they consume; they simply tear off portions, and forthwith swallow them whole. Cooked flesh, however, does require mastication, owing to the coagulation of its proteids. The herbivora, on the other hand, unlike the carnivora, have to subject their food to considerable mastication before it can be swallowed; but they generally masticate it far more than is needful to render swallowing mechanically possible, as is exemplified in the act of rumination, the object here being to facilitate the admixture of the digestive juices with the food.
According to Van Someren, if the habit of masticating efficiently is once acquired, the food is not swallowed before it is converted into the liquid state, the swallowing of unmasticated lumps being effectually prevented by a pharyngeal reflex.
Mastication, by breaking the food up into small particles, enables it to be brought into intimate contact with the digestive juices.—Such comminution is especially needful in the case of raw vegetable foods of the tougher kind, in order to break up their cellulose framework, and to set free the contained starch, proteids, and fats. Foods of this kind, unless masticated, yield practically no nutriment to the organism. I cannot too strongly emphasise the fact that before man learned to break up the cellulose framework of his vegetable food by cooking he was compelled to subject it to laborious mastication. But, while thorough comminution is especially needed for vegetable food when raw, it is also needed for many cooked forms of it also,—as, for example, solid batter pudding and new underbaked bread, heavy lumps of which, passing into the stomach, may seriously hamper the work of that organ. Such substances are indigestible essentially by virtue of their impermeability to the digestive juices, and they gain in digestibility in proportion as they are comminuted. The indigestibility of new bread would appear to be wholly due, not to any peculiarity of chemical composition, but to its tendency to elude the teeth and form a sodden mass impermeable to the digestive juices, while the more powdery stale bread is more easily broken up both in the mouth and within the stomach. Cabbage, again, owes its indigestibility to the fact that it is allowed to pass into the stomach in large masses, while the well-known digestibility of cauliflower and minced spinach is due to the fineness of their division; were cabbage as finely minced as spinach usually is it would be equally digestible.
Turning now to animal food it has to be remarked that while in the raw state it may be readily digestible with little or no previous mastication, since massive pieces of it are readily attacked by the digestive juices, the like is much less true of animal food the proteids of which have been coagulated and rendered less permeable by cooking. Large lumps of hard-boiled egg or overdone meat, for instance, may obstinately resist gastric digestion; indeed, as with vegetable so with animal foods, their relative digestibility depends more upon physical consistence than chemical composition; beef is generally more indigestible than mutton and pork or veal than either, not so much by virtue of chemical composition as of physical consistence; the indigestibility of cheese illustrates the same truth; the individual nutritive ingredients of this substance—the proteids and fats—are not in themselves indigestible; casein in the form of protein or plasmon is known to be easy of digestion, and butter is one of the most digestible of fats; but in cheese the two are welded together into a comparatively impermeable mass, which is apt to escape comminution by the teeth and to pass down into the stomach in the form of solid lumps. A plain, wholesome cheese well masticated or intimately mixed with other foods, as in macaroni cheese, is quite easily digested by the majority.
I do not, of course, deny the influence of the chemical factor. Undoubtedly food may disturb digestion by virtue of its chemical composition, apart altogether from its physical characters; thus, while cooked goose-fat sets up violent irritation in some, others cannot tolerate eggs in any shape or form, and innumerable idiosyncrasies in respect of special articles of diet are met with which are essentially referable to chemical composition; but making due allowance for this chemical influence there can, I think, be little doubt that the digestibility of the more common articles of diet, both animal and vegetable, depends in the main upon their physical constitution, all of them tending to be equally digestible when reduced to the same degree of comminution. This, if true, is, I need scarcely say, a fact of the greatest practical importance, for it amounts to this: that we may often allow to those with very weak digestions foods which are generally considered indigestible, provided that they be thoroughly comminuted, whether by mastication or artificial means.
Mastication promotes the flow of saliva and the insalivation of the food.—The more efficiently food is masticated the greater is the salivary flow, and the more intimately is it mixed with the saliva, or, as we say, insalivated. The saliva has apparently no effect on fats; whether it acts on proteids seems more doubtful, though by some authorities the penetration of these by the alkali of this fluid is said to aid in their subsequent digestion; on starch, however, the saliva acts very potently, and hence mastication plays a special part in promoting the digestion of starchy foods. Indeed, if only mastication be persisted in long enough, starch may be wholly converted into maltose within the mouth, and it need scarcely be said that it is better for the individual himself to manufacture his maltose in this way than that he should take it ready made for him in the form of one of the many “malt extracts” on the market. Patients are often forbidden starchy food, while they are allowed the maltose which they can quite well manufacture in their own mouths. Provided they be sufficiently insalivated, there are few starchy foods which are indigestible, not even excepting the proverbially indigestible new potato. These remarks are especially applicable to children, as will be more particularly insisted on later.
Mastication increases the amount of alkaline saliva passing into the stomach, and this not only prolongs the period of starch digestion within this organ but, by its influence upon the reaction of the gastric contents, influences all the digestive processes taking place there. I shall have occasion to point out later that a deficient supply of alkaline saliva in the stomach predisposes to certain forms of indigestion.
Mastication acts reflexly upon the stomach.—It is now known that the act of mastication influences the stomach reflexly, promoting the flow of gastric juice and thus preparing the stomach for the entrance of food into it. If the œsophagus of a dog is cut so as to allow the swallowed food to escape instead of passing into the stomach, it is found that the mastication of food causes a considerable flow of gastric juice. Food introduced into the stomach unaccompanied by mastication is less effective in promoting the gastric flow. It is probable that the influence of mastication on the flow of gastric juice is largely produced through the medium of psychic influences, for the more efficient the mastication the more is the sense of taste affected.
Mastication stimulates the heart and so promotes the general circulation.—This stimulating action may be partly due to its local action on the flow of blood and lymph in the jaws and accessory parts, and partly to a reflex influence, but whatever the explanation there can be no doubt of the fact. Hence the mere chewing of a non-nutritive substance, such as gum arabic, is stimulating, and, doubtless, the stimulating effects induced by the chewing of such articles as tobacco and betel are largely to be explained in this way.
This subject is of such importance that it needs to be dealt with in some detail. By “adjacent structures” I mean the masticatory muscles, tongue, teeth, salivary glands, the nasal passages and sinuses pertaining thereto, the naso-pharynx, soft palate, and tonsils.
The muscles of mastication.—Let me at the outset draw attention to certain anatomical points, in connection with the muscles of mastication. These are (a) their massiveness; (b) the very close relation of the pterygoids to the naso-pharynx; and (c) the outward direction of the pterygoids.
(a) It is not until one studies the muscles of mastication closely that one comes to realise their massiveness. Their large size, in relation to the bony structures in connection with them, is well shown in a vertical transverse section of the head carried through the ascending ramus of the mandible[7] (see Fig. 1). It is evident that the functional activity of so large a mass of muscle tissue cannot but exercise considerable influence on the nutrition of the neighbouring parts.
(b) The pterygoid muscles, springing as they do from the internal pterygoid plates, must necessarily be in close relation with the naso-pharynx, especially the internal pair, which take their origin from the internal aspect of the internal plates. I would further point out that the external pair, although they diverge from the naso-pharynx on their way to the mandibular condyles, yet remain on a level with that cavity. This close relation of the pterygoids to the naso-pharynx is, if I mistake not, of great importance in relation to the etiology of “adenoids.”
(c) Of the two pairs of pterygoids the external pair pass in the more outward direction, forming with the sagittal plane of the head an angle of 45° (see Figs. 1 and 2). In consequence of this direction they tend by their contraction to pull the pterygoid plates and posterior parts of the maxilla away from the sagittal plane of the head, and thus to secure the normal width of the posterior nares. It is these muscles which bring about the lateral movements of the mandible, causing the lower teeth to move laterally and sagittally across the upper, the food being in this way far more effectually ground than by a mere vertical pressure of the teeth against one another. These lateral movements are, as we shall see, less pronounced among the moderns than among primitive peoples.
The influence of the contraction of the masticatory muscles on the local circulation of blood and lymph.—When a muscle is at rest the blood flows sluggishly through it, while there is a complete, or all but complete, stagnation of the lymph current; if a lymphatic trunk of a limb at rest be cut no lymph escapes from it. Rhythmic muscle contractions, however, stimulate the flow both of blood and lymph (a), in the contracting muscles themselves and (b) in the neighbouring parts. (a) Not only are the muscle arteries dilated during rhythmic contractions, but the blood is vigorously squirted out of the muscle veins, so that much more blood flows through a muscle during its rhythmic contraction than during rest. The flow of lymph is even more markedly stimulated,—this fluid, which, while the muscle is at rest, is stagnant or all but so, being during contraction driven actively along the lymphatic trunks. (b) How greatly rhythmic muscle contractions influence the circulation of fluids in the neighbouring parts is shown by the flushing of the skin and the swelling of the soft parts generally of a limb which is being exercised. We thus see how profoundly the exercise of the masticatory muscles—and among these we must not forget to include the tongue—influences not only their own nutrition but that of the important structures adjacent to them—that is to say, of the jaw-bones, salivary glands, buccal mucous membrane, soft palate, faucial tonsils, pharynx, and naso-pharynx, as well as of the nasal cavities and their accessory sinuses. All these parts are during mastication copiously flushed with blood and lymph, from which it is evident that efficient mastication must stimulate their nutrition and favour their proper development. Hence, in one who has from childhood upwards been accustomed to masticate efficiently, we generally find these parts well developed, the jaws large and shapely, the teeth regular and straight, the tongue and salivary glands large, the nasal and naso-pharyngeal passages spacious, and the mucous membrane of the buccal and adjoining cavities healthy.
Influence of mastication on the jaw-bones.—It is well known that the size of a bone is largely determined by the degree to which the muscles attached to it are exercised. That the jaws do not grow to their normal size, if not adequately exercised during their period of growth, is strikingly shown by the overcrowding of the teeth, which takes place in those brought up on soft foods, and this even though there be no contraction of the jaws resulting from mouth-breathing. The dependence of the size of the jaws upon the degree to which they are exercised is also shown by the smallness of the modern jaw, as compared with that of primitive peoples, a difference which, as we shall see, is in part congenital and in part due to the comparative disuse of the former. Mastication influences not only the size but also the shape of the jaws (a), through its influence on the size of the tongue, which by pressing against the teeth tends, as Sim Wallace has shown, to expand the jaws; (b) by the pressure of opposing teeth against one another, which has a similar effect; and (c) by the outward pull of the pterygoids, which tends to widen the maxilla posteriorly and to broaden the posterior nares.
Influence of mastication on the teeth.—The teeth being developed within the jaw-bones and remaining, even after eruption, in close anatomical and physiological association with them, must necessarily share in their nutritive tendencies. If these bones are efficiently exercised during the formation of the teeth—and my remarks apply especially to the permanent set—the tooth-germs will be abundantly flushed with blood, while the ample growth of the jaws themselves will provide the germs with plenty of room in which to grow and to develop, and the more perfect their growth and development the more resistant should we expect them to be to the ravages of caries. Who can contemplate the jaw-bones of a six-years-old child, dissected so as to display all the imbedded teeth, without being assured of the effect of mastication upon dental development? Fifty-two teeth meet the view: the whole region from the orbital rims to the inferior border of the mandible is literally paved with them, and I can hardly doubt that they collectively weigh more than the bone in which they are imbedded. Surely no one can examine such a dissection without being convinced of the urgent necessity, if the teeth are to grow and to develop normally, of giving the child’s jaws from infancy onwards plenty of work to do.
The ample development of the jaws, which efficient mastication brings about, has a further beneficial effect as regards the teeth, in that it enables them to take up their proper places in the alveolar ridges, thus securing all the advantages of a good “bite.” These I now proceed to consider. The teeth during mastication, and especially when the bite is good and the food of a kind necessitating vigorous and sustained mastication, are made to move in their sockets both vertically and horizontally; the effect of this is to stimulate the circulation in the tooth-pulp, the alveolar periosteum (and hence also in the cementum and alveolar walls which are supplied by it), and the circumjacent mucous membrane of the gum. All this makes for the health of the teeth; not only does it promote the nutrition of the tooth itself and of its bony socket, thus maintaining a firm dental setting, but it also tends to secure a healthy environment for the exposed part of the tooth—that part, namely, wherein caries begins—by maintaining a healthy state of the surrounding and, indeed, of the entire buccal mucous membrane, as well as of the various secretions which bathe the mouth. Wherefore it is not surprising to find that those who masticate efficiently suffer much less from dental caries and its complications (such as abscess at the root) and disease of the periodontal membrane (e.g., pyorrhœa alveolaris and loosening of the teeth) than those who are accustomed to bolt their food.
A few words as to the influence of mastication in wearing down the teeth. In those races which masticate vigorously the teeth in quite early adult life show signs of wearing away, while in later life it is quite common for the biting surfaces to be worn flat; sometimes the crown of the molars is worn away so that its surface shelves downwards and inwards and not infrequently it is concave, having a scooped-out appearance; often the dentine is exposed in this way; and yet among many hundreds of skulls examined I do not remember to have seen one single case where caries has started on the biting surface thus worn down.
I had always attributed this wearing down of the teeth to the friction of coarse food against them. Primitive races eat coarse vegetable food, which frequently contains grit, and this doubtless helps to grind the teeth down, but they may be markedly ground down even in those living on soft food, and in such cases the grinding away can obviously only be due to the friction of opposing teeth against one another. I, indeed, believe this to be the essential cause of the phenomenon, both in civilised races living on soft food and in primitive races whose coarse food necessitates prolonged and vigorous mastication and a corresponding amount of attrition between the biting surfaces of opposing teeth. In order that this attrition may occur two things are requisite: the upper and lower teeth must be well opposed—there must be a good bite—and mastication must be vigorous and of the right kind. Mere vertical pressure of the teeth against one another will not wear away the opposing surfaces; there must be friction of these surfaces against one another—a transverse and sagittal movement of the lower teeth against the upper by means of the pterygoids. Mainly to this do I attribute the marked wearing down of the teeth observed in primitive peoples, and I am gratified to know that so competent an authority on dental pathology as Sim Wallace is a convert to this view.
That all the teeth may be worn down just as we observe in primitive people, even in those who have lived all their lives on the ordinary fare of the moderns, is proved by a case I have under observation. It is that of a man in his fiftieth year, who was brought up in Belgium but who has resided in London for the last thirty years. When he came to my out-patient room I was not a little surprised to find that all his teeth were sound—a very unusual occurrence, I need hardly say, among the London poor at his age. In seeking for an explanation I elicited the fact that he was unable to swallow his food without chewing it very thoroughly, and on giving him a moderate-sized piece of bread, with the request that he should chew it in the ordinary way, I found that he subjected it to one hundred and twenty separate bites before swallowing it, and in the steady, deliberate way he went to work and in his extensive lateral movements of the mandible he reminded one for all the world of a cow chewing its cud. The temporals and masseters of this man are enormous, and the like is no doubt true of the pterygoids; he has well-developed nasal passages, has never suffered from nasal obstruction, while his buccal mucous membrane is unusually healthy for one of his years and circumstances. May we not attribute this healthy state of the mouth, teeth, and nose to the good effects upon them of efficient chewing? Here is a man who has lived for thirty years in London on the same kind of food as the average poor Londoner, but instead of finding his mouth full of carious, tartar-coated teeth, and spongy, receding, pus-exuding gums, we find thirty-two sound teeth firmly set in healthy gums and all but devoid of tartar.
A word as to the wearing down of the teeth in the anthropoid apes. In this respect the gorilla differs markedly from the orang and the chimpanzee. In all the skulls of these latter which I have examined the teeth show signs of wearing away, while I have found the teeth of the gorilla, with the exception of the tusk-like canines, but little worn. From this we should expect the latter animal to be mainly carnivorous, and the orang and chimpanzee to be largely herbivorous.
SECTION II. From London Lancet, July 18, 1903
During man’s progress upwards from the anthropoid his diet has undergone a progressive change, and a parallel adaptation has taken place in his jaws and teeth. Dietetically considered, we may divide his evolutionary career into the following epochs[8]: (1) the anthropoid stage; (2) the pre-cooking human stage; (3) the cooking pre-agricultural stage; (4) the early agricultural stage; and (5) the late agricultural stage.
1. The anthropoid stage.—The diet of man’s anthropoid ancestors was probably much the same as is that of existing anthropoid apes; it consisted, namely, of raw vegetable and animal food, necessitating a vigorous use of the maxillary apparatus. This latter, we may assume, was of the type belonging to the anthropoids—i. e., the jaws were massive and markedly prognathic; the denture was the same as it is in existing man, but the teeth were larger, especially the upper canines, which served as weapons of offence and defence; the third molars (the wisdom teeth) were as large as the other molars and were provided with three fangs, and there was an ample portion of alveolar ridge behind them; there was no chin. No doubt the massiveness and the marked prognathism, which characterised the jaws at this stage, served other ends than that of mastication; it is obvious that projecting jaws and teeth are much more effectual for seizing and lacerating prey than are the orthognathic jaws of modern man.
2. The pre-cooking human stage extends from the time man’s ancestors first assumed the human form till they learned to apply fire in the preparation of their food. During all this period the jaws and teeth were probably used as much, or almost as much, for mastication as during the anthropoid stage; raw animal food had to be torn from the bones, the latter had to be crunched, while the bulk of the raw vegetable food needed then no less than it needs now prolonged and vigorous mastication in order to liberate the starch and other nutritive ingredients from their undigestible cellulose envelopes.[9] Nevertheless, the jaws and teeth underwent considerable change during this period, for not only were they with every advance in intelligence called less and less into requisition for purposes of offence and defence, but the jaws, at least, became materially modified in correlation with the expanding cranial cavity and in connection with the assumption of the erect posture. It is, I think, rather for these reasons than in consequence of alterations in the nature of the food that the masticatory apparatus now gradually lost its more bestial aspect and assumed an essentially human type, becoming towards the close of the period much the same as may be observed among the most primitive peoples now living.
3. The pre-agricultural cooking period.—The characters of the maxillary apparatus belonging to this period are still available for study, the aboriginal Australians, the Bushmen, Negritos, and many Esquimaux not having yet emerged from it. So far as mastication is concerned, cooking influences vegetable far more than animal food, for it not only softens it but by rupturing the undigestible cellulose chambers and liberating their contents relieves mastication of one of its essential functions. Wherefore, with the advent of cooking, man’s jaws and teeth began to get smaller, and they have continued to diminish in size up to the present time. No great diminution, however, took place at first, inasmuch as the diet still continued to be largely animal (and prior to the use of knives and forks such food had to be torn by the teeth), while the coarse vegetable food of this date, even when cooked, still needed laborious mastication. The chief differences between the maxillary apparatus of this early cooking age as compared with that of the present day are as follows: the jaws of the earlier period—e. g., in the aboriginal Australian—are more massive, and their sagittal diameter is greater, giving rise to decided prognathism, the teeth for the most part are larger and stronger, the third molars being nearly, if not quite, as big as the other molars, and provided with three fangs, while there is a considerable portion of alveolar ridge behind them. The third molars, however, show a decided tendency to be smaller than the rest, and the alveolar ridge behind them is less marked than in the previous period, features, I doubt not, attributable to the influence of cooking in diminishing mastication. Dental caries is rare and is chiefly met with in the third molars.
4. The early agricultural age.—All the existing primitive races which have attained to the cultivation of the soil may be regarded as belonging to this period. Previously to it man was mainly carnivorous, owing to the comparatively limited quantity of vegetable food available, so long as the supply was left to nature alone; but when by cultivation this supply was increased and, at the same time, rendered more constant and certain, he gradually became less carnivorous and more vegetarian in his diet. The result of agriculture, however, is not only to increase the supply of vegetable food, but to diminish its fibrous, cellulosic ingredients, and thus to render it more easily masticated. Hence at this stage we find the maxillary apparatus becoming smaller than in the previous period, although the difference as shown—e. g., by the examinations of the skulls of the African negroes and the Melanesians—is less pronounced than we might perhaps have anticipated; prognathism is not so decided, the jaws are smaller, also the teeth, especially the third molars, which now for the first time show a tendency to be furnished with two instead of three fangs, while the alveolar ridge behind them is distinctly shorter than in the preceding period. Dental caries, hitherto rare, now becomes more frequent.
5. The late agricultural period.—A mid-agricultural period might be described, but I shall take no account of it here, but pass on to a consideration of the late agricultural period—that, namely, in which we ourselves live. The chief characteristic of the food of this period is its softness. Cooked animal food requires, indeed, more mastication than raw, but the vegetable food of to-day, owing to the combined effects of improved agriculture, and skilful milling and cooking, is so soft as to excite comparatively little mastication. The present may, in fact, be described as the age of pap. Hence the jaws and teeth are now called upon to perform far less work than in any earlier stage of our evolution, and there has taken place in consequence a great diminution in their size, more especially in the size of the jaws, so that there is now often no room for the teeth to take up their normal positions, and there is generally a complete absence of alveolar ridge behind the last molars. The latter are, moreover, apt to be very small or even absent, while dental caries is alarmingly frequent.
It will thus be seen that from the period of the anthropoids to the present time, a progressive change in the size and shape of the jaws and teeth has been taking place, a change which is to be explained by (1) the cessation of the need for using them for offensive and defensive purposes; (2) the growing capacity of the cranium and the assumption of the erect position; (3) the progressive alteration in man’s diet; and probably also (4) considerations of beauty. The first three factors have operated through natural selection, the last through sexual selection, which has come into play, I would suggest, chiefly within recent times. Probably the most pronounced change which has taken place in the jaws during the agricultural periods has been the suppression of prognathism which, in the woman especially, is very unsightly, and tends to diminish the likelihood of marriage.
A study of existing primitive peoples brings forcibly home to the mind how laboriously the jaws and teeth of our primitive ancestors were used. I have already shown how in pre-agricultural and early agricultural times the nature of the food compelled a sustained and vigorous exercise of these structures, and I wish here only to refer to a few specific and peculiar instances of laborious mastication exercised by primitive races now or recently living.[10] Among some of these mastication has been promoted almost to the position of an industrial art.
The chewing of very tough substances in order to extract therefrom liquid or nourishment.—The recently extinct Tasmanians included among their articles of diet a species of sea-weed which, even when cooked, was so tough as to require long-sustained mastication in order to extract its nutrient elements. The Indians of North California chew kelp, which is “as tough as white leather” (i. e., leather dressed with alum). “A young fellow with good teeth will masticate a piece of it a whole day.” Again Featherman[11] tells how when the Bushmen are short of food in the winter they steep an old dried gnu-skin in water and, having rubbed off the hair, boil it, and proceed to gnaw the tough morsel until their very jaws ache. The Modoc Indians are said to munch the raw kais root all day long.[12] Among the Esquimaux it is a universal custom to chew the raw skin of the whale, the porpoise, and the seal for the blubber it contains, and the skin being as tough as india-rubber, it requires, as may be imagined, a good deal of chewing. The Lower Californians also chew deer-skin and ox-skin (Bayert). The more southern Esquimaux, according to Nansen, preserve the stalks of angelica by steeping them in a mixture of chewed blubber and saliva. Finally, I may refer to the habit of chewing the sugar-cane, a practice which is prevalent among the natives in all countries where the cane grows, and affords, it need scarcely be said, abundant exercise for the jaws and teeth.
Mastication in the preparation of beverages.—I find that among widely separated aboriginal peoples chewing is resorted to in the preparation of beverages, both intoxicating and non-intoxicating. The Gran Chaco Indians make an intoxicating drink by chewing the algarroba bean and then spitting into a receptacle. In other parts of South America berries are chewed with the same object. In some of the Pacific Islands boys and girls with good teeth are selected to chew a root (kava), from which they then prepare a drink. In New Guinea drinks are similarly prepared from roots. Boiled cassava root is chewed by the Indians of Nicaragua for the same purpose. In British Guiana the natives make a drink by adding chewed maize and saliva to sweet potato, maize, and sugar-cane. The Indians in Honduras, after steeping cassava cake or carbonised bread in hot water, chew a portion and mix it with the rest.
Mastication in the industries.—Even among moderns teeth are used for many purposes other than mastication—e. g., for holding pins and needles and for severing cotton; also in some industries—e. g., among diamond workers—where it is the custom for girls to hold the diamond between their front teeth, which in consequence get much worn away, as I have myself seen. It is only among primitive peoples, however, that the jaws and teeth actually play the part of implements for use in the arts. The Australian women make lines, nets, and bags by chewing various kinds of fibre, a process which wears down their teeth considerably and may cause them to be tender.[13] The Esquimaux are still more dependent upon the use of their teeth as implements, especially in the preparation of skins for their clothing, boats, and lines. The teeth are used to hold the skins, while the latter are being scraped, the mouth constituting, in fact, “a third hand;” and the front teeth of Esquimaux women are often by this means worn away to the merest stumps.[14] The garments of the Esquimaux, even to the boots, are made up of skins which have been laboriously chewed for this purpose by the women “inch by inch,” till they acquire a beautiful softness and flexibility, and are often, indeed, chewed again after having been dried. And we are told that the women have no objection to the task, while the children are eager to help in it on account of the blubber the skin contains; also, that in bad times the men do not object to join in the work. The lines for harpooning are prepared in a similar way from the skin of the bearded seal, and in very large quantities.[15] When we think of the quantity of skins needed for these lines, for their dress, including boots and gloves, and for their boats (although for the latter some skins are used without having first undergone chewing), it is clear that enormous quantities must be chewed. The Esquimaux men also use their teeth considerably in other work—e. g., in lashing the sledges together.[16] The Indians of North California use their teeth for stripping the bark from the fresh shoots employed in making their wickerwork utensils, and they also employ their teeth in making strings, cords, and nets.
Seeing that the maxillary apparatus of man has for long ages past been put to vigorous use, it is not surprising that the need to exercise it should express itself as a powerful instinct. This instinct manifests itself in many and curious ways, some of which I will now consider. During the early months of life the natural function of feeding at the breast provides the infant’s jaws, tongue, and lips with all the needful exercise. This bottle-feeding fails to do, and we frequently find bottle-fed children seeking to satisfy the natural instinct by sucking their thumb, fingers, or any convenient object to hand. The teeth are a provision for biting hard foods, but even before they actually appear we find the child seeking to exercise his toothless gums on any hard substance he can lay hold of, and there can be no doubt that exercise of this kind tends to facilitate the eruption of the teeth, a truth, indeed, recognised universally, whether by the primitive mother who strings the tooth of some wild animal round the neck of her infant, or the up-to-date parent who provides her child with a bejewelled ivory or coral bauble. When the teeth have erupted, the masticatory instinct finds among primitive peoples abundant satisfaction in the chewing of the coarse, hard foods which constitute their dietary; but among us moderns, subsisting as we do mainly on soft foods, affording but little exercise for the masticatory apparatus, it does not find its proper expression, and thus tends to die out. Nevertheless, it dies a hard death, and long continues to assert itself; witness the tendency of children to bite their pencils and pen-holders; I have known a child to gnaw through a bone pen-holder, much in the same way as a carnivorous animal gnaws at a bone.
This instinct to chew for chewing’s sake manifests itself all over the world. In our own country not only do children bite pencils and pen-holders, but they will chew small pieces of india-rubber for hours together. The practice of gum-chewing, so common among our American cousins, evidently comes down from far-off times, for the primitive Australians chew several kinds of gum, attributing to them nutrient qualities,[17] and the Patagonians are said to keep their teeth white and clean by chewing matri, a gum which exudes from the incense bush, and is carefully collected by the women and children.[18]
A widespread custom in the East is betel-chewing, which is met with in India, Malay, Melanesia, and Polynesia, and even among the primitive Veddahs of Ceylon. This article is composed of the pungent leaf of the betel plant, the areca nut and lime rolled together, and when chewed yields a reddish juice which stains the mouth and teeth. The Veddahs, failing to get the genuine article, manufacture a quid from the leaves of an aromatic plant, the barks of one or two kinds of tree, and calcined small shells.[19] The compound must possess some strange attraction, for otherwise such pains would not be taken to secure it. What is the attraction? Doubtless betel has stimulating properties, and it must, moreover, be remembered that the mere mechanical act of mastication stimulates the circulation, a fact which helps to explain the tendency for man, all the world over, to chew non-nutrient substances. Tobacco-chewing is common in many parts of the world, and here, again, the effect for the time is stimulating. Pitcherie is extensively chewed among the aboriginal Australians; it consists of twigs of about the thickness of rye-grass stems, which are first chewed into a mass, then mixed with the ash of gum trees, and made into a paste, which is chewed for its stimulating and narcotic effects.[20]
I may allude in passing to the grinding of the teeth, which takes place during sleep in disturbed states of the nervous system. It is a true masticatory act, in which the normal lateral movement of the mandible is well marked, and it may thus be regarded as a perverted manifestation of the masticatory instinct.
The effects for good upon the organism of efficient mastication being profound and far-reaching, it follows that inefficient mastication must lead to many evils. What these are we have now to consider; but first it will be well to inquire into the causes of the defective mastication which prevails among moderns.
1. Softness of food.—By far the most important of these lies in the nature of the food taken. The food of to-day—of the late agricultural age period, as I have termed it—is for the most part soft and pappy, of a kind which does not compel thorough mastication; so much so, indeed, that, as I have already said, we may speak of this as the age of pap. This feature is especially noticeable in the case of children’s diet: under the modern system children are kept on a liquid, or semi-liquid, diet, not merely during the first months, but during the first years of life, and at the seventh or eighth month all kinds of artificial saccharide foods in liquid or semi-liquid form are poured into the child’s stomach; thereafter he is fed on such viands as mashed potatoes and gravy, rusks soaked in milk, milk puddings, bread dipped in bacon fat, pounded mutton, thin bread-and-butter, and the like; and we are told that this is the kind of diet best suited to the young human, from the time of weaning to the end of the second year! The same pernicious methods are adopted subsequently. “Perhaps the great majority of children after they have got their complete set of temporary teeth have,” writes Dr. Sim Wallace,[21] “a dietary such as the following. Breakfast: bread-and-milk or porridge, milk, tea, coffee, or cocoa, bread-and-butter, perhaps an egg. Dinner: potatoes and gravy, or meat, milk pudding. Tea: milk or tea with bread-and-butter, jam, cakes. Supper: bread or biscuit and milk.” Now food of this kind does not invite mastication, and it finds its way into the stomach all too readily. Hence the instinct to masticate has little opportunity of exercise and, not being properly exercised, tends, as I have said, to die out. Small wonder that the child nourished on such pappy food acquires the habit of bolting it, and learns to reject hard, coarse foods in favour of the softer kinds; everything nowadays must be tender, pultaceous, or “short.” Given a choice between a food compelling little or no mastication and one necessitating prolonged mastication—as between, say, fresh Vienna bread and an Abernethy biscuit—and in nineteen cases out of twenty the one which gives the least trouble in eating will be chosen. To such absurd lengths has this harmful custom been pushed that even bread crust is avoided by many. Witness the fashion of eating bread-and-butter with a minimum of crust; order bread-and-butter at any place of refreshment, and the last thing you will be served with is a plateful of crusts of bread. Many establishments, indeed, make a regular practice of giving away their crusts as unsaleable. Thus, the rectangular loaves used for bread-and-butter in the “Aërated bread-shops” are cut transversely into slices, each loaf thus yielding two end crusts which are put into baskets for the poor, only the soft crumby pieces being reserved for the customers, to be, in due course, no doubt washed down by copious libations of tea and coffee.
When we trace the diet of the modern from childhood upwards we find the same story: it tends to remain soft and pappy to the end. Animal food, especially as it comes to the tables of the well-to-do, necessitates very little mastication. It is the coarser varieties of vegetable food alone which call out the full functional activity of the masticatory apparatus, but the vegetable food of to-day is rarely of a kind to do this; cooked vegetables, such as potatoes, greens, peas, and beans, can be, and generally are, swallowed after little or no preliminary mastication, and our flour is so carefully deprived of its fibrous portions and so cunningly dealt with in the bakehouse and kitchen in the making of bread, cakes, and pastry which shall eat light and short that these articles get very little chewing; while such vegetable products as rice, vermicelli, tapioca, and macaroni are, as served at table, so soft that they slip down into the stomach almost as readily as simple milk. Let any one run through his dietary of any one day, and he will realise how very little work his masticatory apparatus is called upon to perform. It will read something like the following. Breakfast: porridge and milk, eggs, bacon, bread, and marmalade. Lunch: fish, tender meat, boiled vegetables, bread, some “sweet,” and cheese. Tea: bread, butter, and cake. Dinner: much the same as lunch. What opportunity, I ask, does such a bill-of-fare afford for the development of teeth and jaws, and for the proper functional activity of the salivary glands?
2. Defective masticatory apparatus.—Another potent cause of inefficient mastication is some defect in the masticatory apparatus, and defects of this kind are very common in those who have not been accustomed to masticate thoroughly in early life. Foremost among these are irregularities of the teeth leading to faulty “bite” and caries of the teeth which causes them to be tender or to break away, if it does not lead to their actual extraction. Mastication cannot be thorough where the bite is defective, for this not only leads to imperfect opposition of the upper and lower teeth, but renders the lower ones incapable of that ample lateral movement, against the upper which is needful to normal mastication.
3. Idiosyncrasy.—Some are temperamentally more disposed to hurry over their meals than others. The katabolic, restless, nervous individual is more apt to swallow his food hastily than is his more deliberate and phlegmatic brother. Individual differences in this respect are even observed among the lower animals. Thus, one of a pair of horses of about the same age and build is nervous and excitable and inclined to bolt its food, while its companion of more stolid temperament is a thorough and efficient masticator. The former shows comparatively little wearing down of the teeth, and often suffers from indigestion, a large portion of corn grains passing through his digestive canal intact; in the latter the teeth are well worn, indigestion never occurs, and but very few grains pass through the digestive tract unchanged. It may be objected here that we cannot help temperament, and to a large extent this is true; but much can be done towards modifying it, and it is something to know where dangers, temperamental dangers, among others, lie.
4. Circumstances of life.—Again, in this hurrying, strenuous age people are much less deliberate than in the easy, slow-going days of long ago. A meal is too often regarded as something to be got through quickly, as taking up time which might be devoted to something more profitable. Especially is this true of breakfast and lunch; it is no uncommon thing for a business man to hurry through his breakfast in a few minutes, preparatory to rushing off to his train, and his lunch as likely as not is as hastily swallowed in his office or at a bar. Tradesmen are apt to take their meals in mere snatches; apprentices, shop girls, and other “hands” are often not allowed sufficient time for their meals; while, to come to the professions, we all know how the busy medical man, for instance, is often obliged to take a hurried snack in the short intervals between seeing his patients. No wonder that thus circumstanced people acquire the habit of bolting their food. A meal should be regarded as an end, and an important end, in itself. It should be taken at leisure, body and mind being, for the time being, given up to it, and to agreeable social intercourse. If this rule were always observed a most important source of inefficient mastication would be removed.
Section III. From London Lancet, July 25, 1903
Too much food is eaten.—Inefficient mastication conduces to excessive eating. Now it is obvious that soft foods, and these constitute the bulk of our modern dietary, pass much more readily into the stomach than coarse, hard foods which compel a certain amount of preliminary mastication, and for this reason the former predispose to excessive eating: hence a danger at all periods of life, not only in grown-ups but in children, even infants; brought up as the latter are, mainly on liquid and pappy foods, many of them consume not only far more than is needful, but far more than is healthful, their stomachs being literally deluged with nutriment.
When the food is of a kind necessitating abundant mastication it is much less likely to be taken in excess, for the longer the time spent in mastication the less will the individual be tempted to consume; even in the case of soft food, less will probably be eaten if it be thoroughly masticated and insalivated than if it be bolted. Thorough mastication, however, not only tends to diminish the amount of food consumed on account of the time and labour which it entails; it actually reduces the amount needful to constitute a sufficiency, for the more perfectly the food is chewed the more perfectly is it digested and the more economically is it disposed of in the system; the less, moreover, is the tendency to that morbid craving for food which is so frequent an accompaniment of defective digestion. It is certain that appetite and the needs of the system are sooner satisfied when food is well masticated and digested than when it is swallowed whole.
A mass of unmasticated food may lodge in the throat and cause fatal suffocation.—This may seem to be a very exceptional kind of evil, but I am informed by one whose experience makes him an authority on the ways of the British soldier that it is by no means uncommon for soldiers in barracks to die from this cause. Usually it is when they are under the influence of alcohol that fatal results occur, post-mortem examination disclosing large undigested masses of food in the stomach. A like experience is also frequently met with in the case of men killed by accident.
The presence of masses of imperfectly masticated food in the stomach may cause disturbance either mechanically or by reason of their imperviousness to the gastric juices.—We have already seen that the digestibility of a food is largely determined by its consistence, and that many articles of diet, such as cheese, hard-boiled egg, cocoa-nut, lobster, and new bread, which have the reputation of being very indigestible, can, if finely comminuted by chewing or otherwise, be rendered quite digestible. Such articles are indigestible essentially by reason of their compactness; the compact lumps, but little pervious to the gastric juice, tend to undergo abnormal chemical change in the stomach, and may in this way cause violent local irritation, even to the extent of setting up acute gastritis; or they may paralyse the nerves of the stomach and check gastric secretion and movement, and thus remain in loco wholly undigested for hours or even days; or, again, more distant nervous effects may be produced, such as frontal headache, which may be felt almost immediately after ingestion of the peccant substance, being of reflex rather than toxic origin, and presumably in some cases, at least, due to the mere mechanical irritation of the stomach. The passage of imperfectly digested food into the bowel may still further aggravate matters. It does not seem improbable that the habitual bolting of food, by the prolonged local irritation to which it gives rise, may predispose to cancer of the stomach: Napoleon was a notorious fast eater and it is well known that he died from this disease.
While, however, the bolting of food readily sets up disturbance in some, it must be conceded that in many it seems to cause little or no inconvenience; especially is this the case in the young with vigorous muscular stomachs capable of triturating the food, and thus doing duty for the teeth. The human stomach is, indeed, a long-suffering organ, and wonderfully tolerant of ill-treatment, sometimes almost rivalling in its hardiness the gizzard of the bird. Nor is this surprising when we reflect that it is, in the ordinary course of nature, constantly exposed to the entrance of noxious substances. In this respect it stands in marked contrast to the intestines, for not only are highly irritant substances often vomited rather than passed onwards, but in ordinary circumstances the gastric contents are not allowed to pass the pylorus, until they have been duly prepared by the stomach; the pylorus, in fact, stands guard over the entrance to the bowel and is jealous of anything passing it which is likely to injure that canal.
And just as the pylorus protects the bowel so, in exceptional cases, may the œsophagus protect the stomach, regurgitating, after the fashion of the ruminants, insufficiently masticated bits of food, in order that they may be re-masticated. I have myself met with cases in point. Sometimes, in cases of this kind, the œsophagus may be dilated into a sort of proventriculus, which is capable of temporarily lodging a large quantity of food. Such a proventriculus is said to have developed in an apprentice who, not being allowed sufficient time for his dinner, rapidly bolted it, to regurgitate it after working hours and to chew the cud at leisure. Whether in these cases the food is ever returned from the stomach itself I am unable to say.
While the stomach is the organ especially liable to be injured by the swallowing of lumps of unmasticated food, the bowel may also suffer, especially the cæcum and vermiform appendix. And here we come to one of the most serious indictments against the bolting of food; though man has doubtless always suffered from appendicitis, there can be little doubt that this malady is more common now than it used to be; and there is equally little doubt, in my own mind at least, that the cause of its greater frequency is related to his food. I do not propose to discuss here in detail how food is capable of causing appendicitis, but will merely refer to one of the ways in which it may do so. I had already come to the conclusion that the habit of bolting food is a potent cause, when I read Sir Frederick Treves’s Cavendish Lecture in which he makes that contention. Sir Frederick Treves points out that in this rushing age people, especially business men, are apt to hurry over their meals and to take them at irregular times and often while standing at a bar; even when there is more leisure, food is rarely masticated nowadays in the same thorough way that it was in the old time, when it was of a coarser nature: hence solid lumps, especially in the case of such articles as pine-apple, preserved ginger, nuts, tough meat, and lobster, are apt to pass beyond the pylorus and, escaping intestinal digestion, to lodge in the cæcum and precipitate an attack of appendicitis, the most common predisposing cause of which is a loaded cæcum, often preceded by constipation. Sir Frederick Treves contends that this distended state of the cæcum encourages catarrh of the appendix by dragging upon it and blocking its orifice, as well as by twisting it and thus interfering with its blood-supply.[22]
An excess of starch is apt to pass into the stomach.—We have just seen that inefficient mastication tends to promote over-eating, and what has been said on this head applies to all kinds of food, starchy foods among others. It leads, however, to a further evil as regards these latter; not only does it tend unduly to increase the quantity of them consumed, but it too often causes the stomach and intestines to become flooded with starch in a wholly undigested form. I cannot too frequently repeat that in ancient times, especially in the pre-cooking age, laborious mastication was needed in the case of all starchy foods, partly because they were coarse and fibrous, but chiefly because the starch and other nutritive ingredients had, in order to become available for nutrition, to be liberated from their undigestible cellulose envelopes. In these days of prepared, soft, starchy foods, however, mastication is very little required for these purposes, but in other respects it is as needful as ever, indeed more needful, if the large quantities of starch which are now consumed are to be insalivated effectually. The laborious and sustained mastication to which primitive man was compelled to subject his limited supplies of uncooked starchy food, went far to effect complete digestion of the starch within the mouth, for raw starch is freely digested by the saliva,[23] and hence in his case very little passed into the stomach in a wholly undigested form. How different is the case with us moderns. Since the opening of the era of agriculture and cooking, man has enormously multiplied his supplies of saccharide, and he now consumes large quantities of starch which has been freed from its cellulose framework by cooking, milling, grinding, and the like, and reduced to a soft or pappy form, such as milk puddings, porridge, boiled potatoes, and new bread, all of which can be swallowed with little or no preliminary chewing; and when food can be swallowed easily, without mastication, few will take the trouble to masticate it. In these circumstances the starch does not undergo adequate salivary digestion, and a large quantity passes wholly undigested into, and out of, the stomach, not beginning to be digested until it reaches the bowel. Small wonder that the latter should rebel again this invasion and that flatulence, pain, and other dyspeptic evils should result.
It is especially in young children that these evils are observed. Too often the stomach of the child, semi-carnivorous, remember, by its ancestry, is literally deluged with pure starch. At the seventh or eighth month, or even earlier, for many of the patent infant foods contain it, this substance is poured into the stomach without being afforded any opportunity of undergoing salivary digestion; and for a long time after infancy large quantities are given in the liquid or pultaceous form, such as rusks soaked in milk, puddings, and mashed potatoes. This practice of deluging the digestive organs with starch, besides leading to the more immediate troubles connected with flatulent dyspepsia, gives rise to abundant formation of toxins which, by irritating the alimentary mucous membrane, set up gastro-intestinal catarrh; this, again, intensifies the dyspepsia already existing and causes a still further production of toxins, so that the motions become intensely fœtid. These poisons being absorbed into the blood the tissues become saturated with them and the nutrition of the entire organism is disturbed, the faulty metabolism manifesting itself by a diminished resistance to pathogenic agencies, by a tendency on the part of the tissues to inflame (as shown by a liability in children thus fed to bronchitis, rhinitis, naso-pharyngitis, and tonsillitis), by their proneness to tuberculosis, and finally by a disposition to rickets, which I little doubt is essentially of toxæmic origin.
Besides the above-mentioned troubles an excess of starch in the stomach may set up hyperchlorhydria—i. e., that form of dyspepsia in which there is excessive secretion of hydrochloric acid. This affection occurs during the most vigorous years of life and is apparently due to excessive activity on the part of the gastric glands. The excess of acid does not give rise to any symptoms so long as there is any unsatisfied proteid in the stomach to unite with it, but directly all the proteid is satisfied and free acid is present in the stomach, pain, heartburn, and distention are apt to be felt; hence these symptoms are generally removed temporarily by a meal, the food ingested seizing upon the free acid, and tend to recur in the course of an hour or two. Other symptoms are mental and bodily lassitude and great mental depression, while, if the condition is long-continued, gastric catarrh and dilatation ensue. Eructation of the acrid mass, its removal with a tube, or its dilution or neutralisation by an alkali, causes relief of the symptoms. Now Dr. William Russell, who has recently studied this form of dyspepsia, has shown, and the fact is most significant from our present point of view, that in it starch is the last constituent to leave the stomach; that when this organ has so far emptied itself as to contain but one or two ounces of very acrid material the residue consists chiefly of finely divided undigested starch, which continues to stimulate the gastric secretion; “and, there being no more proteid with which to combine, the secretion accumulates and leads to hyperacidity.”[24] Inasmuch, then, as inefficient mastication leads to an excess of starch in the stomach, we see how it may predispose to hyperchlorhydria and we shall presently see that there is yet another reason why it should do so.
It will be gathered from the foregoing that thorough mastication is the most effective way of securing efficient starch digestion. This simple fact has been most strangely overlooked. Thus “van Valzah considers that not a little of the difficulty of the digestion of starches and cereals can be overcome by more thorough cooking. Patients who cannot eat potatoes after ordinary cooking are [he urges] often able to digest them very readily if they are doubly cooked before being served. Cereals, as a rule, should [he contends] be allowed to simmer all night and then be thoroughly cooked for a half hour in the morning before being eaten.”[25] This is an admirable illustration of the modern tendency to cheat the mouth of its proper work. A much more rational way of facilitating starch digestion in those who experience a difficulty in this respect is by efficient mastication.
Evils resulting from an insufficient quantity of alkali in the stomach.—I doubt if it is adequately realised what a large amount of alkaline saliva passes into the stomach as the result of prolonged mastication. Its presence there serves the useful purpose of prolonging the period of starch digestion within the stomach, while it further aids gastric digestion not only by exciting the secretion of gastric juice, but also by its influence on the reaction of the gastric contents; it can scarcely be doubted that the effect is on the whole one favourable to digestion in general. We have just seen that defective mastication may predispose to hyperchlorhydria by allowing an excess of pure starch to pass into the stomach, and I suggest that it may further operate in the same direction by cheating the stomach of its due supply of alkaline saliva. Now the saliva in this affection is apt, as was pointed out by Sir William Roberts, to be superalkaline, and for this reason he recommended his acid-dyspeptics to excite the flow of it by chewing gum-mastic with the object of neutralising the gastric hyperacidity. That relief can thus be obtained there can be no doubt; but it is surely more rational to get the patient to stimulate his salivary glands by masticating actual food, by which we secure the additional advantages accruing from its complete insalivation and comminution as well as from the reflex gastric effects. Actuated by these considerations, I have long been in the habit of recommending hyperchlorhydriacs to subject their food to prolonged mastication, this being, in my belief, the most rational and effective way of breaking the stomach of its vicious habit. In extreme cases we must insist that each morsel of food should be chewed at least one hundred times and not permit any relaxation of this severe discipline, until the stomach has been schooled into healthier ways. Evils in connection with the jaws and their appendages and the adjacent structures: the nasal passages, naso-pharynx, and faucial tonsils.—In those who do not masticate properly in early life these parts fail to develop as they should, and they are on this account alone predisposed to disease; their resistance to disease is still further lowered by the fact of their blood and lymph flow not being adequately stimulated by the vigorous exercise of the masticatory muscles. Now we have seen that the great cause of defective mastication in children is the softness of the food given them and that the feeding of them upon an excess of soft food, especially the starchy kind, disturbs digestion, induces toxæmia, and in this way evokes a catarrhal tendency. In children thus fed we have therefore several conditions which make for disease in the parts under consideration—defective development, sluggish circulation, and toxic saturation. Is it any wonder that the modern child should be liable to disease in these regions, that he should so frequently suffer from rhinitis, naso-pharyngitis, tonsillitis, and from hypertrophy of the pharyngeal tonsil (“adenoids”) and of the faucial tonsils?
It is in this way that I would explain the frequency of adenoids among the children of civilised communities. I claim, in fact, that this disease is largely dietetic in origin. I submit that a child whose nasal apparatus and naso-pharynx are well-grown and habitually bathed by a stream of pure blood and lymph, periodically accelerated by an ample and vigorous use of the masticatory muscles, is unlikely to contract adenoids. On the other hand, I contend that a child in whom these parts are ill-developed and bathed by an habitually sluggish stream of tainted blood and lymph—one, i. e., that is not only poisoned, but rarely, if ever, hurried along its lazy course by due exercise of the muscles of mastication—I submit that such a child runs great risk of contracting the disease. The influence in setting up adenoids of toxic saturation with its resulting catarrhal tendency is shown by the frequency with which this affection follows upon the rhinitis and naso-pharyngitis of measles and diphtheria, and in order to realise how greatly the circulation of blood and lymph in the walls of the naso-pharynx must be influenced by mastication, one has but to remember how very closely the pterygoids are related to this region; in exploring it for adenoids they can, indeed, often be felt to stand out prominently.[26]
This, then, is my explanation of the truly fearful prevalence of adenoids among the moderns. It is essentially a disease of pap-fed peoples. A child may, with the one exception that he is fed on a pappy, super-saccharide diet, be brought up under ideal health conditions. He may live in the heart of a dry, open country, far from the darkness, dust, and tainted atmosphere of the town, sleep with the windows open all night, live out of doors all day, be fed on the most nourishing (too nourishing, it may be) food, be clothed after the most approved methods, and yet, in spite of all this, we may find his naso-pharynx packed with adenoids. This disease is, in fact, scarcely less prevalent in the country than in the towns, scarcely less common among the rich than among the poor. Yet in primitive communities it is practically unknown. And what, I would ask, is the one condition in the material environment of my supposititious child differing from that of the primitive child? What but the factor of diet? Therefore, I say, the prevalence of adenoids among moderns must be the result of the modern system of feeding children, and the defective mastication which goes along with it.
That the foregoing is a grave indictment against that system, it need scarcely be said. For adenoid disease is fraught with many evils, among them mental hebetude, blocking of the Eustachian tubes, and manifold other auditory troubles, gastro-intestinal disturbances from the passage into the stomach of unhealthy discharges, and, most serious of all, nasal obstruction and consequent mouth-breathing. So serious are the evils connected with this latter habit that they demand more than a passing reference. Pronounced adenoid disease is always associated with mouth-breathing, and there can be no doubt that in the majority of these cases, the nasal obstruction is not in the nasal passages primarily, but is due to a blockage of the posterior nares by the adenoid growths, for it generally happens that nasal breathing is rapidly re-established after their removal, though in a certain proportion of cases the obstruction still persists, and has to be dealt with by treatment directed to the nasal passages themselves. Some have, indeed, contended that a primary nasal obstruction is one important factor in the induction of adenoids, leading as it does to a dry-cupping of the naso-pharynx during inspiration and to a consequent congestion of its lining membrane. I am quite ready to allow that this mechanism may play some part in causation, and such an assumption is in entire harmony with my main contention that adenoid disease is of dietetic origin, for nasal obstruction in children, other than that caused by adenoids, is mainly due to defective development of the nasal passages coupled with inflammation of their lining membrane, both of which conditions may, as we have seen, be essentially the outcome of defective diet.
Coming now to the evils resulting from mouth-breathing, we have first to remember that normally the air is inhaled through the nose, and is thus warmed, moistened, and filtered before being allowed to pass into the lungs; but in the mouth-breather the air, which may be dry, cold, and dust-laden, passes at once unprepared through the mouth into the lungs, impinging in its passage against the pharynx, thus drying and mechanically irritating the mouth, pharynx, larynx, and bronchial tubes, all of which are thereby predisposed to disease. In this way laryngitis and bronchitis, nay, even phthisis, may be induced. Dental caries is also predisposed to by the habit of breathing through the mouth. Mouth-breathing further interferes with the proper development of the cranial bones, but especially of the maxilla, giving rise to what may be termed the “mouth-breather’s jaw,” so characteristic is it I do not propose to discuss here the mechanism by which this deformity is produced, interesting though the question is; suffice it to say that nasal breathing is essential to the normal development of the jaws. The deformity in question, though it involves the maxilla chiefly, affects also the mandible from the fact of its being, to a large extent, moulded on the maxilla; in typical cases the maxilla is small and its alveolar ridge does not attain its normal length, but is compressed laterally towards the sagittal plane, giving rise to the false appearance of a “high arch” and often thrusting the anterior portion of the ridge forwards; the teeth, the growth of which is not so much interfered with as that of the imbedding bone, are thus prevented from taking up their proper positions and show irregularity, sometimes extreme. Dental irregularity may also, as we shall see, result from inadequate use of the jaws in mastication, but not to the extent which is frequently observed in the mouth-breather’s jaws, and therefore pronounced dental irregularity always shows that there has been protracted nasal obstruction, and this in the vast majority of cases implies the existence of adenoids, past or present; I say in the “vast majority,” for in a few rare cases long-continued nasal obstruction in children originates primarily in the nose and may lead to the typical mouth-breather’s jaw, with the resulting dental irregularity.