ANALYSIS OF WARTIME REDUCTION OF DENTAL CARIES IN EUROPEAN CHILDREN

Abstract

AN ATTEMPT has been made to assemble and analyze (1) the overall incidence of dental caries in children from different European countries in the period between the beginning of World War I and the termination of World War II and (2) certain dietary factors in operation during the war years and of possible explanatory significance in connection with the observed fluctuations in the frequency of caries. As might be expected, there are wide variations in the conditions under which the surveys were made. Certain of the observations afford a year to year comparison of the same population groups; others were made within a single year or in several isolated years. Similarly, there is not the desirable uniformity in the recording of the dental data to permit as detailed an analysis as might have been desired. An attempt has therefore been made to analyze the combined data in enough detail to