This book of twelve chapters (with seven illustrations) is essentially a grouping of lectures delivered by Dr. Wallace on various occasions before British and American Dental Societies and college students. The various chapters are skilful, forceful and repeated expositions of the author's ideas regarding the cause of dental caries, the comparative value of research in this field by various investigators and methods available in preventing dental disease.
He emphatically questions the importance of vitamin deficiency in the diet as a factor in susceptibility to caries, and presents many good arguments in refutation of the theories of susceptibility so frequently promulgated by dietary investigators.
Dietary habits, rather than the chemical constituents of foods, are the suggested cause of dental caries, and the author would prevent it by education in avoiding soft, mushy and starchy foods, especially the carbohydrates, and finish each meal with a food that would cleanse the teeth, carrying