Note (5) — CANTO SECOND.

“Infants have been born with one or more teeth; this was the case with the great monarch, Louis XIV., in whom the presence of a tooth at his birth, seemed the presage of his future greatness;—Polydore Virgil also mentions a child that was born with six teeth; but towards the end of the first year is the most usual time for the teeth to appear, and about the thirtieth month they are all cut, to the number of twenty: they are called milk teeth, either because they cut while milk is the only nourishment, or because they equal that fluid in whiteness. They are also called primitive or casting teeth: they are ten in number in each jaw; four of which are incisors, two canine, and four grinders. The incisors of the lower jaw appear first, then those of the upper jaw, afterward the canine, or, more frequently, the grinders.

“Every thing here appears to be for the advantage of the infant; an interval of a month or six weeks, between the cutting of each tooth, seems designed to calm the irritation which generally accompanies this evolution; for it is rare to cut these teeth, and particularly the canine, without a swelling in the gums, heat of the mouth, salivation, and redness of the cheeks. This is the way that dentition usually proceeds; sometimes it is so calm and easy, that the tenderest mother has no reason to fear, while at other times it is so laborious, and attended with so many accidents, as to put the life of the child in jeopardy; in this latter case, whatever be the cause, the effects are sufficiently obvious; they have been observed from the earliest times, and almost in every country, and accord with the observation of Hippocrates: ‘Those,’ says he, ‘whose teeth are on the point of cutting, are affected with itching of the gums, fevers, convulsions, diarrhœas; especially in cutting the canine teeth, and in those children which are fat, and of a constipated habit of body.’—(Aphor. sec. III. 25.) To add to this picture, would be to augment that dread of dentition which sensible mothers feel but too acutely at present; without being able to foresee or to combat those causes, which often render it violent, and sometimes mortal. But to dissemble, and to say that dentition is never difficult and perilous, would be to consign too many mothers to a perfidious security, and one day they would have but too much reason to complain of this silence.” (Dentiste de la jeunesse, by Duval, Atkinson’s translation, pp. 29, 30, 31.)