Editorials

Physicians and Thumb-Sucking

A MERICAN babies are making themselves heard. They are becoming an im- portant segment of American society because there are so many of them

in the age group of four and under. They have become accustomed to rubber nipples, nursing bottles, and t,o waterproof appendages, many of which have become a necessity to well-regulated baby lives.

When the rubber shortage became really serious, petitions for relief poured into the War Production Board. The question was referred to the Committee on Drugs and Medical Supplies of the Division of Medical Sciences of the Na- tional Research Council. This body of scientists conducted a survey among leading pediatricians, who were requested to indicate whether or not time-tried soothing devices were essential to the health program to the extent of: (a) be- ing practically indispensable ; (b) not indispensable but highly desirable, if available ; or (c) not essential.

Replies received from a number of pediatricians revealed that only one con- sidered teethers essential, and six considered them desirable. Thus the vote was overwhelmingly against the essentiality of these devices.

These eminent medical experts, in an effort to contribute something to the situation and assist in its solution, suggested a substitute which might, in these abnormal times, be used to compensate for the lack of aids to pacification. Al- most unanimously the experts, when requested to suggest a substitute, opened their mouths and placed their thumbs inside.

The average medical man knows clinically little about local habit,s as an etiological factor in malocclusion because he has never struggled for months to help correct the incidental anomalies. This facetious gesture of the doctors with thumb in mouth, nonetheless, having received nation-wide publicity, will not be without repercussions to the thinking of mothers of young America.

To those who are accustomed to hazard a guess as to future trends of things physical, it would seem reasonable to suppose orthodontic practice may be due for a marked up-trend in about the years 1947 to 1951 and beyond, because the doctors with thumb in mouth gave the green light to at least one of the things known as a local cause of malocclusion. This “go” signal accompanied with nation-wide publicity, featuring doctors with thumbs in their mouths, would make a good movie short to be used to teach medical students that there is much to be learned in recorded orthodontic scientific literature that every young doctor should know. It might, also, indirectly reveal to him that a “sure fire” for wide publicity for the medicos is for a group to stand with thumbs in mouth when asked questions about jaws and teeth.

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-H. C. P.