Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/69

 When a babe is born with teeth they generally drop out. On the other hand, teething in some children does not commence until they are a year and a half or two years old, and, in rare cases, not until they are three years old. There are cases recorded of adults who have never cut any teeth. An instance of the kind came under my own observation.

Dentition has been known to occur in old age. A case is recorded by M. Carre, in the Gazette Medicale de Paris (Sept. 15, 1860), of an old lady, aged eighty-five, who cut several teeth after attaining that age! 59. What is the number of the set of teeth, and in what order do they generally appear? The first or temporary set consists of twenty. The first set of teeth are usually cut in pairs. "I may say that nearly invariably the order is—1st, the lower front incisors [cutting-teeth], then the upper front, then the upper two lateral incisors, and that not uncommonly a double tooth is cut before the two lower laterals; but at all events the lower laterals come 7th and 8th, and not 5th and 6th, as nearly all books on the subject testify." [Sir Charles Locock, in a Letter to the Author.] Then the first grinders in the lower jaw, afterward the first upper grinders, then the lower corner pointed or canine teeth, after which the upper corner or eye-teeth, then the second grinders in the lower jaw, and lastly, the second grinders of the upper jaw. They do not, of course, always appear in this rotation. Nothing is more uncertain than the order of teething. A child seldom cuts his second grinders until after he is two years old. He is usually, from the time they first appear, two years in cutting his first set of teeth. As a rule, therefore, a child of two years old has sixteen, and one of two years and a half old, twenty teeth. 60. If an infant be either feverish or irritable, or otherwise