Vol. 38, No. 3 - Summer, 1978 253

THE EDITOR EMERITUS STILL S Q U A W K S Getting Under Human Skin

When annoyances, such a s hungry, feminine mosquitos, South American bees, famished deer flies, aroused wasps, disturbed hornets, or any similar members of the order /f.i,nicnopteru settle on the skin of the Emeritus Editor and begin lunch, his initial reaction is to swat with a much better average than Babe Ruth. The sequential symptoms which follow, even so, are pain, swelling, reddening, itching, and eventually a personal reaction called scratching. When any member of Homo supirns gets under this reporter’s skin however, his most frequent reaction is to write a “squawk.” Four of the Horninidue contributed to this reaction for the Spring Issue of the Jourrrcrl.

Stimulant No. One came from reading something written with a quill-pen early i n the Eighteenth Century. I n 1715, Isaac Watts dashed off his “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour‘!” My reaction to this nonsense in “Divine Songs” is “My hat. the busy bee stings !”

Stimulant No. ‘Two arrived last July, 1977, when the dean of a dental school sent me a torn- out sheet of Cul (p . 2). Draped in vivid yellow was the title, written by George Crane, “Slenderi7.e if you want to romanticize.” This silly attempt to “-ize” all English nouns, verbs, and adjectives, earns the response, “Someday, Crane may mature until he knows better.’’ Note that I said “may.”

Stimulant No. Three arrived August 26, 1977, when a former graduate mailed me page 19 of A r t y i . 7i‘tne.s. It bore the title “Pentagon Propagates Armyeese Gibberish” and. indeed. i t performed well its task of defacing English. One will find such contributions as “total put,” “throughput,” “interput,” “interoperability.” “signage,” “pentagonian.” and even “human fuel- intake systems” f o r the forks, knives, and spoons used to get food from the thence to thither. Inasmuch as the Emeritus contributor, during World War I , got accustomed to the result when a puckered oral cavity screeched out. “You can’t get ‘em up” on a bugle, he will refrain from comment until this toot can be heard again.

Stimulant No. Four by Stanley Temple was printed in Science lor August 26, 1977. and was titled “Plant-Animal Mutualism; Coevolution with Dodo Leads to Near Extinction o f Plant.” Since the dodo ceased being an endangered species about 1690 by becoming extinct (not quite four centuries ago, mind you), an investigator in 1977 should have become a “senior citizen,” about ready to graduate at the time he completed his investigation. Some things i n his centuries’- old investigation earn a bit of discussion o r dissection because of the jargon employed which spoils a good story.

I’he dissection now begins, first with the title’s “mutualism.” What is “niutualism”anyhow? The surgeon, performing this autopsy, a comprehensive dictionary, practicing without a degree of M.D.. will scrub. don sterile gown, mask, and rubber gloves, and prepare for the busy period ahead. The “surgeon” found, promptly, “mutualism” was a bit tough to define scientifically, about the same problem confronting many public health dentists when they start to designate their functions to the denizens who inhabit Planet Earth today. Eventually, the “surgeon” was ready t o accept “mutualism”as a term, spawned by biologists, which means for those specialists: “Any association between two organisms such a s occurs in parasitism or symbiosis.” With mutualism cleared from its cloud of obscurity. one may anticipate additional cloudy terms to develop, such as “mutualire” and “mutualization.” Reserve all cheers, though. until investigators discover they can use simple “mutual” which means “having the same relationship. one with another.”

Mutualisms having been disclosed, a combination of letters remaim in the title which spells “coevolution,” so the “surgeon”continues operating and, as might beexpected,dissects out “co-” as in cojointly ~ although this time the term fails t o indicate the dependence of one coexisting partner on the other, which was to be shown in the dodo-calvaria reporting.

With the title dissected, the time has come to read Temple’s abstract: An endemic, sapotaceous tree Cu/i’uriu niujor, found in the island of Mauritius (Indian Ocean). is nearly extinct because its seeds apparently required passage through the digestive tract of the now extinct dodo, Ruphus c.uc~rt//etus, t o overcome persistent seed-coat “dormancy” caused by a specially thickened “endocarp.”

254 Journa l of Public Health Dentistry

“Endemic.” as might have been anticipated turned out to be native to o r confined to a particular region. I t would have been awkward, obviously, t o study both d o d o and calvaria unless both were basking on the same beach a t the same time. “Sapotaceous” has been the term long used by botanists t o designate plants which yield a milky sap. Novices might wonder why not just use “sap” and risk the danger of being called a saphead?

Next. one encounters “dormancy” a noun, if you please, all dressed formally to replace the simple adjective “dormant.” For botanists, however, dormancy designates “a relatively inactive or resting condition which slows down certain processes.” The reason for a dormant period is the hard woodlike wall which forms around the seed or pit of calvaria, its “endocarp” in the language of botany. Unless this wall can be reduced considerably in thickness and crushed, the seed will fail in its assigned task of generating and developing a new young tree. Maintaining the species, hence, gets tough. The scientist directing the research being reported obtained a supply of pits, fed them forcefully to a group of turkeys approximately the same size as the drawings of the dodo indicated. and waited to see if a week spent in the turkeys’ginards would serve t o thin o u t and crush the walls around the pits. The extruded pits were collected, planted, and did generate. Some empirical conclusions now could be made and they were.

At this point, enough data appear to have accumulated for any editor to indulge in some “pGp i t?jry” summation (note the way in which television’s commentators now pronounce preparatory). Interested readers should be advised t o shed no tears and to build no memorials for the departed Ruphu.s c~uc~ullatus, an ugly bird indeed. Be sorry. instead, that a good story got buried beneath the “endocarp” of biologists’ jargon when simple English is available. In imitation of the “style biological,” however, one might want t o conclude that stories, masked by professional jargon, can get under the integument commune of many H o r n o supien.s, through a piercing penetrability sufficient to disorganize the dormancy of its four strata, the corneum, lucidum. granulosum, and mucosum.

- K A E

Chewing Caries Away

William S. Driscoll and his group a t the National Institute of Dental Research studied a group of first- and second-graders in Wayne County, North Carolina who chewed tablets of acidulated phosphate-fluoride for 55 months. The children who chewed two tablets per day experienced a reduction of lesion a t 41.9 to 50 percent for late erupting teeth when compared with controls.

-American Denial Association Journal for March, 1977. - K A E

Don’t Be a Slave!

Learning, today, never ends. The person who quits learning after graduation from school o r college reverts promptly to slavery. Reversion occurs because the number of new things, today, develop so fast that they rapidly outnumber the old things. As long as people a re willing to exist a s the slaves of nature, they will have to get along with a workhorse’s mentality. Continuing education, however, can rescue them from their slave-like insignificance and emancipate them from their powerless, lonely existence.

-From the Royal Bunk qf’ Cunadu Month1.v Letter for November, 1977. - K A E