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157
REPORT OF DENTAL SURGEON.
May, 1931.
The Medical Officer of Health,
Barking Town Urban District Council.
Sir,
I have the honour to submit the annual report on the School
Dental Service for the year 1929-1930.
At the commencement, attention is called to the small number
of schools examined during the year. In explanation it is to be noted
that in the past it was customary to make school examinations
with frequency and by rota irrespective of the number of children
waiting for treatment. This led to an accumulation of children
examined but not treated, the number examined considerably
exceeding the number treated. At the commencement of the year
1929 over two thousand children who had been examined were
awaiting treatment, and it was considered administratively and
professionally necessary to lessen considerably this number before
proceeding with the examination of further schools.
Attention is also drawn to the fact that there has been considerable
reduction in the extraction of both temporary and
permanent teeth. In this respect teeth that would have been
condemned in the past have been submitted to treatment by
routine applications of ammoniacal solution of silver nitrate with
extremely gratifying results, 80 per cent. of teeth that might have
proved unsavable without such treatment having been usefully
retained.
The frequency of dental caries in this country is out of all
proportion to the knowledge of preventive dentistry at the disposal
of the population. A consideration of dental disease should commence
not when the first infant tooth appears but so soon as a mother
becomes pregnant, under advice obtained at ante-natal clinics, or
from attending practitioners. A diet plentiful in calcium salts and
those accessory food substances known as vitamins should be taken