Copy 1, Volume 1

The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good].

  • Good, John Mason, 1764-1827
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/784 (page 39)
    - CL. I. ] DIGESTIVE FUNCTION. [ ORD. I. | eflicacious relief. And not unfrequently the permanent teeth as- cend with great irregularity, and press against the crown or fangs of these above them in erroneous directions; whence another source of considerable pain. In this case, the best and indeed the only radical cure is to extract the upper or cutting tooth, and thus allow freedom to the under tooth to right itself* [The milk-teeth occasionally continue in the jaw long after the common period of their being shed; and, as this circumstance does not necessarily prevent the permanent ones from being cut, the jaw seems at first really to contain a preternatural number of teeth ; but, in most instances of this kind, the appearance of the permanent teeth is retarded, or they are even wanting, a circum- stance fully accounting for the anomaly of the extraordinary conti- nuance of the others.+ The permanent teeth occasion the falling out of the milk ones principally by destroying by their pressure the vessels and nerves of the latter, as well as their adhesion to the alveoli. The destruction of the fangs is not an invariable effect, as the milk-teeth, when they are shed, sometimes have those parts In the formation, and especially in the cutting, of the third set, or WISE TEETH, we ordinarily meet with a far more considerable decree of pain and inconvenience, and this too for many weeks ; and the pain spreads by sympathy to the ear, which is often more affected than the tooth itself. Such is especially the case where the formation takes place late, and after the jaw-bones have ceased to grow, and the gum has become thick and callous ; for we have here a want of sufficient room, and little power of enlarging it by absorption. In the upper jaw, moreover, the tooth on each side is frequently obliged to incline backward, by which means it presses on the anterior edge of the coronoid process in shutting the mouth, which causes an additional degree of uneasiness; while, in the lower jaw, some part of the tooth continues to lie hid under the coronoid process, and the portion of the gum that covers it is per- petually liable to be squeezed by the tooth below, and the corre- sponding tooth in the jaw above. In this case nothing but a very free crucial opening will suffice ; and often nothing but an excision of a very considerable piece of the callous gum: while there are other instances, in which the evil can only be cured by removing the tooth itself. We sometimes, though rarely, meet with playful attempts on the part of nature to reproduce TEETH AT A VERY LATE PERIOD OF LIFE, and after the permanent teeth have been lost by accident or natural decay. This most commonly takes place between the sixty-third and the eighty-first year, or the interval which fills up the two grand cli- macteric years of the Greek physiologists; at which period the constitution appears occasionally to make an effort to repair other defects than lost teeth, on which we shall have occasion to treat present system is denominated climacteric. § * De l’ Arrangement des Secondes Dents, ou la Méthode Naturelle de diriger Ja deuxiéme Dentition, &c. par M. Duval Broch, 8vo. Paris, 1820. + Meckel, Manuel d’ Anat., tom. iil. p. 359. $ Serres, op. cit. p. 102. § See Class m1. Ord. 1y. Gen. m1. Spec. 2. D 4 39 Gen. I. °* Srec. I. BO. Denti- tionis Puer- ilis. Permanent teething. vy O. Denti- tionis Adulto- rum. Adult teething. 6 O. Denti- tionis Seni- lium. Climacteric teething.