MOUTH INFECTION AS A SOURCE OF SYSTEMIC DISEASE

Abstract

It has taken a long time for the general public to appreciate the full role of infection in the production of death, while even in the medical profession, more has come from the study of infections in the prevention of disease than in increasing the means of cure of disease, great as have been the results of treatment. Since all animal life depends on some other form of cell life, vegetable or animal, it seems but the part of all life to carry on this process of germinative development and maturity. It is only the resistance of healthy cells that prevents the inroads of the myriads of ever-present bacteria and animal parasites which are striving to get a foothold that they may in turn carry on their life work. Disease, then, is an inflammatory process from infection and the efforts at repair. It may also be chronic from the failure