..."of carious teeth that cannot spit..."
The archaic word "carious" (Eliot 2307) was crossed out by Pound in his edits of the first draft, and the substitution of "rotten"(V. Eliot 71) was offered. However, Eliot persisted in retaining "carious," because it is a medical term specific to decayed teeth or bone, and he wanted to keep the connotation that these teeth (and perhaps the bone around them) are rotting slowly away. The waste land is not only a place of dryness, it is a place that rots one's bones and teeth. It is this connotation that Eliot wanted to keep intact.
This website the work of Abigail L. Bunting
This website the work of Abigail L. Bunting