The teeth, in relation to beauty, voice and health. Being the result of twenty years' practical experience and assiduous study to produce the full development and regularity of those essential organs / by John Nicholles.

  • Nicholles, John.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The teeth, in relation to beauty, voice and health. Being the result of twenty years' practical experience and assiduous study to produce the full development and regularity of those essential organs / by John Nicholles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    48/158 (page 32)
    The two eye teeth^* when projecting be- yond the proper oval, impede the action of the upper lip, and thus destroy the undulations of voice so essential to perfect harmony; the lip terrupted and does not correspond with the other organs, whose simultaneous action is re- quisite to perfect speech. * Here again I use a phrase, though palpably incorrect, which from the abuse of the custom wiU be better understood by the generality of readers than the legitimate and technical word, Cus- pidati. But this expression cannot be too soon abandoned, for it only serves to continue a foohsh notion, which arose in the time when the use of the dissecting knife was much less frequent than at present. Then they supposed there was a connexion between the cuspidatus and the eye, and the plxrase eye-tooth confirms and propagates the blunder in the minds of those who are not better taught by anatomy. Nor is this absurdity confined only to the unprofessional; there are many dentists, so happily ignorant of the human structure as to participate in the delusion, in consequence of which they have a peculiar respect for the eye-tooth, and never venture on its extraction without fear and trembling. These teeth have been called also laniary, from the Latin, laniare, to tear or rend, and it seems peculiarly apposite: “ laniabant dentibus artus,” is the expression of Virgil. Perhaps it would be better at once to anglicize all the technical names applied to the teeth, and call them incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and molars.