Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The works of John Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![Of the Cavity of the Teeth. Every tooth has an internal cavity, which extends nearly the whole length of its bony part*. It opens or begins at the point of the fang, where it is small; but in its passage it becomes larger, and ends in the body of the tooth f ; the cavity at this end is exactly of the shape of the body of the tooth to which it belongs ; and in general it may be said that the whole of the cavity is nearly of the shape of the tooth itself, larger, that is, in the body of the tooth, and thence gradually smaller to the ex- tremity of the fang ; simple where the tooth has but one root]:, and in the same manner compounded when the tooth has two or more fangs §. This cavity is not cellular, but smooth in its surface : it contains no marrow, but appears to be filled with blood-vessels ||, and, I suppose, * PI. V. f. 1, 2, 3, &c. t Ibid. X PI. V. f. 4, 5, 6, 7. § PI. V. f. 1, 2. || PI. VIII. f. 7, 8. the otherwise healthy bony structure of a tooth when much inflamed, discoverable by breaking or sawing asunder the body of the tooth immediately after extraction. The other, the injection of a tooth with bile in cases of jaundice, of which I have seen more than one example. In the former instance, the red patches are of rather a bright co- lour, until they become dull and obscure by time; and in the latter the whole substance of the tooth is imbued with a bright yellow colour. The experiments on madder would be far from conclusive on the point at issue, even were the details more complete. In the absence, however, of all information respecting the duration of each experiment, and especially the period which elapsed after the madder had been discontinued before the animal was killed, it would be futile to com- bat the conclusions which Hunter has deduced from them. Thus deficient, they only prove that the more highly organized bones, as might be expected, lose the colouring matter of the madder by absorption sooner than the teeth. The paragraph in which the results are summed up is perhaps as characteristic of the peculiar tendencies of Hunter’s mind as any that can be found in his works. Concluding, from the failure of his experiments with madder, and from other peculiarities, that the teeth are devoid of a circulation through their substance, and therefore to be so far considered as extra- neous bodies, his intense love of truth, which never suffered him even to escape from a dilemma by its slightest sacrifice, forces him to confess the existence of a living prin- ciple, because he found, from the result of other experiments, that they “ were capable of uniting with any part of a living body.” Instead, therefore, of endeavouring to render his theory consistent with itself, by disguising or perverting one of the two in- compatible conclusions to which his observations had forced him, he adopts them both, and is thus driven to the inference, that an organ can, at the same time, be “an extra- neous body,” and yet possess “a living principle,” and be “ capable of uniting with any part of a living body.” The truth appears to be, that the teeth are truly organized bodies, having nerves and absorbent and circulating yessels, but possessing so low a degree of living power, and so dense a structure, as to exhibit phenomena, both in their healthy and diseased condition, which are very dissimilar from those which are observed in true osseous structures.] c 2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996635_0002_0039.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
