Word: decays
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...caption of the photograph of the present Supreme Court [TIME, Oct. 26] is not quite up to par. Paraphrasing the old hymn, it might well have been-"Change and decay in all around I see," or with the addition of a few banjos and a very little black face the old minstrel show salutation-"Gentlemen, be seated" might be in order...
...Tooth decay is commonest in the North, but relatively quite rare in the South. This latitudinal dental mystery was revealed last week in the American Journal of Public Health, by Dentist Bion R. East of Columbia University. Like most other dentists, Dr. East readily admits that nobody knows the basic cause of tooth decay, hence his geographic phenomenon contradicts no other widely held medical beliefs on tooth decay...
Sugar rationing may well cut down "the rampant decay of American teeth," writes Research Dentist Thomas J. Hill of Western Reserve University in Dentistry. Decay of teeth, says Hill, is a product of civilization. It increases with a people's standard of living and is almost unknown among the few isolated and primitive races on the fringes of civilization. At the end of the Civil War the average American ate only 31 Ib. of sugar yearly. By World War I consumption had risen to 85 Ib. Last year it was 114 Ib. The average American, says Hill, today...
...contributing causes of tooth decay are not clearly understood, Hill admits. But it is certain that decay is usually associated with the presence in the mouth of swarms of bacteria, whose acid excretions etch away calcium from the teeth. These bacteria cannot live in human saliva unless sugar is present; and since sugar does not occur in normal saliva, they must get their nourishment from food taken into the mouth. Says Dr. Hill: "When diets are followed which contain a rigid restriction of sugar, these acid-forming organisms rapidly disappear from the saliva...
...with the help of the swarms of protozoa (one-celled animals) which teem in its guts. Since termites reduce cellulose (the toughest part of plants) to humus and provide food for new plants, their destruction of wood is really a vital part of the vegetative cycle of growth and decay...