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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    through their bony sockets, there are small holes leading to them on the inside, or behind the temporary sockets and teeth ; and these holes grow larger and larger, till at last the body of the tooth passes quite through them.* Of the Growth of the Two Jaws. As a knowledge of the manner in which the two jaws grow will lead to the better understanding of the shedding of the teeth, and as the jaws seem to differ, in their manner of growing, from other bones, and also vary according to age, it will be here proper to give some account of their growth. In a foetus three or four months old, we have described the marks of four or five teeth, which occupy the whole length of the upper jaw, and all that part of the lower which lies before the coronoid process, for the fifth tooth is somewhat under that process. These five marks become larger, and the jaw-bones of course increase in all directions, but more considerably backwards; for in a foetus of seven or eight months the marks of six teeth in each side of both jaws are to be observed, and the sixth seems to be in the place where the fifth was ? so that in these last four months the jaw has grown in all directions in proportion to the increased size of the teeth, and besides has lengthened itself at its posterior end as much as the whole breadth of the socket of that sixth tooth. The jaw still increases in all points till twelve months after birth, when the bodies of all the six teeth are pretty well formed; but it never after increases in length between the symphisis and the sixth tooth; and from this time, too, the alveolar process, which makes the anterior part of the arches of both jaws, never becomes a sec- tion of a larger circle, whence the lower part of a child's face is flatter, or not so projecting forwards as in the adult. After this time the jaws lengthen only at their posterior ends; so that the sixth tooth, which was under the coronoid process in the lower jaw, and in the tubercles of the upper jaw of the foetus, is at last, viz. in the eighth or ninth year, placed before these parts; and then the seventh tooth appears in the place which the sixth occupied, with respect to the coronoid process and tubercle; and about the twelfth or fourteenth year, the eighth tooth is situated where the seventh was placed. At the age of eighteen or twenty, the eighth tooth is found before the coronoid process in the lower iaw and under or somewhat before the tubercle in the upper iaw, which tubercle is no more than a succession of sockets for the teeth till they are completely formed. * [In the last paragraph of the section is an additional instance of ,hp tnt»l misunderstanding of the relation of the permanent to the temno'arv tee,h 1 Sn! their formation. The holes which have been described in a formS note t h! foramina through which the communicating cord passes from ,| P ° ' ! rudiment to the neck of the temporary tooth are heretonZ siateftXT commencement of the openings through which the nerirn Pn . fi d ° be the subsequent progress. See PI. V. 9, 10, n, 12.] pennanent teelh P*ss in their
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