Treatise on the natural history and diseases of the human teeth : explaining their structure, use, formation, growth, and diseases, in two parts / by John Hunter ; with notes by Thomas Bell.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on the natural history and diseases of the human teeth : explaining their structure, use, formation, growth, and diseases, in two parts / by John Hunter ; with notes by Thomas Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    time, viz. about the twentieth or twenty-fourth month; however, the first grinder is often more advanced within the socket than the cuspidatus, and most commonly appears before it. These twenty are the only teeth that are of use to the child from the seventh, eighth, or ninth month, till the twelfth or fourteenth year. These are called the temporary, or milk teeth, because they are all shed between the years of seven and fourteen, and are sup- plied by others. Of the Cause of Pain in Dentition. These twenty teeth in cutting the gum give pain, and produce many other symptoms which often prove fatal to children in denti- tion. It has been generally supposed that these symptoms arise from the tooth's pressing upon the inside of the gum, and working its way mechanically ; but the following observations seem to be nearer the truth. The teeth, when they begin to press against the gum, irritate it, and commonly give pain. The gums are then affected with heat, swelling, redness, and the other symptoms of inflammation. The gum is not cut through by simple or mechanical pressure, but the irri- tation and consequent inflammation produces a thinning or wasting of the gum at this part; for it often happens, that when an extra- neous or a dead substance is contained in the body, it produces a destruction of the part between it and that part of the skin which is nearest it, and seldom of the other parts, excepting those between it and the surface of a cavity opening externally, and that by no means so frequently; and in those cases there is an absorption of the solids, or of the part destroyed, not a melting down or solution of them into pus. The teeth are to be looked upon as extraneous bodies with respect to the gum, and as such they irritate the inside of that part in the same manner as the pus of an abscess, an exfoli- ation of a bone, or any other extraneous body, and therefore pro- duce the same symptoms, excepting only the formation of matter. If, therefore, these symptoms attend the cutting of the teeth, there can be no doubt of the propriety of opening the way for them; nor is it ever, as far as I have observed, attended with any dangerous consequence.* * [There can indeed be no doubt that the emancipation of the rising tooth is occasioned by absorption of the gum, but it is also probable that this absorption is increased, if not wholly produced, by the pressure of its edge on the hori- zontal surface of the tooih. Ii appears probable, therefore, that when, in conse- quence of the rapid elongation of the root, the crown of the tooth rises faster than this process for the removal of the containing parts goes on, an undue pres- sure takes place on the inside of the gum, and local inflammation, accompanied by much constitutional disturbance, is the result. The mere existence of the tooth in contact with the gum as an extraneous body, would not account for all this disturbance, for after the gums are lanced the tooth is still in contact with the soft parts ; but because the pressure is thus taken off, the irritation immediately subsides.]