Block That Cavity!

There is a county in the Texas Panhandle--it rejoices in the name of Deaf Smith County--where almost no one has any holes in his teeth (TIME, Nov. 10, 1941). So, a couple of years ago, reported a brave dentist named Edward Taylor who practiced there. Dentist Taylor thought that tough teeth resulted from the meat and vegetables raised on Deaf Smith soil, rich in calcium and phosphorus, and from Deaf Smith drinking water, rich in calcium and fluorine.

In the Journal of the American Dental Association last week, Dentist S. G. Harootian told how he gave the Deaf Smith treatment a preliminary clinical trial in a Massachusetts madhouse. Dr. Harootian gave capsules of bone flour (rich in calcium, phosphorus and fluorine) to nine women whose teeth were decaying very rapidly. Decay seemed to stop almost at once. During the nine-month trial no tooth decay spread, only one new cavity developed. One hole, drilled for a filling but left empty, did not decay at all.

Says Dr. Harootian: "The results are so striking as almost to eliminate coincidence as an explanation."

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