The Influence of Diet on Teeth and Bones.*

It is well known from previous work that the antiscorbutic vitamin seems to be concernedin the calcium deposition in the organism. We know from the fundamental experiments on scurvy by Holst and Friilich (1) that, in guinea, pigs fed on a scorbutic diet, marked changes occurred in the whole bony system with great fragility of the long bones. A faulty calcium metabolism must evidently be the underlying cause. These excellent experiments performed about 17 years ago have been verified by other investigators. As a result of these experiments several other investigators became interested in the question: Whether or not a lack or insufficiency of the antiscorbutic vitamin in the diet would have any influence on the formation and the maintenance of the teeth. In other words, .whether or not the dental caries had any relation to the antiscorbutic vitamin. Dental caries has until recently been considered more or less a result of local processes in the mouth, the general metabolism not being regarded as playing any important part in the process of tooth decay. The earliest authors have looked upon the tooth as a fixed part of the body undergoing no change during different pathological processes in the general organism. In other words, the tooth has been regarded more or less as a dead substance. There is, however, no reason to believe that the tooth should be any exception from other parts of the organism where an active metabolism is going on. Among the authors who have studied