A Moment Of Tooth

"When I was growing up" -- in the '50s -- "reaching the teen years you'd develop enormous amounts of decay," he says. It wasn't until the '60s, when most baby boomers were growing up, that fluoridation really started having a major impact. By the '90s, "if new patients came in that were young people, under 30, you really were surprised if you saw significant" cavities.

Fundamentally intact teeth, plus the increased attention paid to gum disease that can loosen them, have brought about a transformation.

"When I started out in dentistry, in my practice it wasn't uncommon for people losing their teeth -- you took out all their teeth and made a denture. You were working on a denture at all times," says Seldin. "Now, five new dentures a year, that's a lot. We go out of our way to avoid them."

So what's the future of dentures?

"Hopefully, they will become a relic," says Mary MacDougall, director of the Institute of Oral Health Research at the University of Alabama. "Like Washington's false teeth."

Visions of Cuspids

If we no longer lose our teeth, will we lose our dreams about losing our teeth?

Teeth have great power in symbol and myth. Primitive people commonly adorn themselves with the teeth and claws of conquered animals. You still see shark-teeth necklaces on the chests of young beachgoers -- usually male, presumably attempting to declare their virility.

"The tooth is the only part of the body that, as children, we get money for," says Betty Sue Flowers of the University of Texas, who edited "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. "There's no nail-clipping fairy. There's no hair-cutting fairy."

Since teeth are the archetypal means of attack, loss of one's teeth in dreams signifies "a fear of castration or of complete failure in life," reports J.E. Cirlot in "A Dictionary of Symbols," the authoritative examination of the collective, social and religious meanings of images throughout history.

Freud thought that our extremely common tooth-loss dreams were about sexual guilt. Wow, was he predictable.

"Meaningful symbolic interpretation of teeth in dreams usually comes down to one idea: To lose teeth is to become vulnerable, to lose the first line of defense," says Bernard Welt, professor of arts and humanities at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, where for 25 years he has taught a course about dreams.

"Thus it is not surprising if someone who feels defenseless or abandoned emotionally dreams of losing teeth."