The Skin of Your Teeth

The Watchtower, July 1, 1958

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“I escape with the skin of my teeth.” This expression, found at Job 19:20, prompts the question: What is the skin of your teeth? A report in Scientific American of June, 1953, says: “Microscopic techniques now reveal tooth enamel to be not a dead shell but the hardest and strongest tissue in the body, a ‘superskin’. . . . Essentially the teeth consist of two types of hard tissue: the dentine or ivory core, and the enamel, or ‘skin’. . . . The enamel is produced by skin (epithelial) cells. . . . Enamel is unique among living matter in two respects; it has no cells or blood vessels. . . . Certainly enamel cannot reproduce itself, as living tissues usually do. But then, neither can some of the highly specialized cells of the body, such as the brain neurons. . . . We used radioactive isotopes of phosphorus, calcium, iodine and other elements to find out whether . . . a turnover took place in the enamel. The experiments proved that it did. . . . In short, the enamel is not as fixed or as dead as it seems. Like other hard tissues, it carries on a traffic with its environment, albeit without the aid of blood vessels or cells.” In its issue of November 15, 1916, page 348, The Watch Tower published a description of this ‘skin of the teeth’ in vindication of Job’s words.

Also in this issue

• A Good Conversation
• Announcements
• Anything but Live It
• Check Your Memory
• Dishonest Shepherd Disgusts Catholic Lamb
• Endurance
• Fulfilling the Commission to Go Preach
• Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
• In the World but No Part of It
• Is the Rosary Christian
• Keeping a Firm Grip on the Word of Life
• No Time
• Not Fair-Weather Christians
• Out to Buy a Bible
• Pursuing My Purpose in Life
• Questions From Readers
• Scriptural Summit
• Studying with a Purpose
• Summed Up
• The Divine Gift of Memory
• Worth Even More