As a part of project for studying the reduction of human dentition, an examination of dental diseases in the Yedo era was made. Materials used were 27 maxillae and 26 mandibles with permanent or mixed dentition, selected from 529 Japanese skulls from the Yedo era. As the number of materials available was not sufficient to represent the character of the population, the purpose of this paper might be limited just to present the data obtained.
By comparing these data to those from the later Jomon, Kamakura, Kofun, Muromachi, and modern ages, however, it might still be possible to consider that the specificity of dental diseases in this period was similar to that in the modern age, but less serious. The influence of the discrepancy was dominant in maxilla, while the environmental pollution seemed to be the main pathogenetic factor in mandible.
The Journal of the Anthropological Society of Tokyo