[The tooth in the Bible].

In this short essay the author investigates from the view of pathology, physiology and dentistry those chapters of the Bible where human or animal teeth occur. Regarding the number of occurrences of teeth in the Bible there are 36 cases in the Old Testament and 11 in the New Testament. Out of this number 39 are about human teeth and 8 about those of the animals. The paper starts with the consideration of the talio-law (Lev 24.20: "If he knocks out a tooth, one of his teeth shall be knocked out"), which is regarded to be originated in the Babilonian King Hammurabi's compendium (B.C. 19th century), which was asserted by the king to have been delivered to him by Marduk. Comparing the habit of gnashing, grinding, or gritting of teeth, or showing the white of one's teeth, the author points out that whereas the first is a passive concomitant of pain (either mental--in which case it is called bruxomania, or otherwise: based on physical reasons) the second type is a phenomenon of an imminent action (i.e. threat or attack). Periodontics (or parodontology that is to say the branch that deals with diseases of the supporting and investing structures of the teeth including the gums, the cementum peridontal membranes and alveolar bone), regards the grinding of the teeth to be a parafunction ...