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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![The Manner in which a Tooth is formed. The body of the tooth is formed first, afterwards the enamel and fangs are added to it. All the teeth are produced from a kind of pulpy substance, which is pretty firm in its texture, transparent, excepting at the surface, where it adheres to the jaw, and has at first the shape of the bodies of the teeth which are to be formed from it*. These pulpy substances are very vascular : they adhere only at one part to the jaw, viz. at the bottom of the cavity which is to form the socket, and at that place their vessels enter, so that they are prominent and somewhat loose in the bony cavity which lodges them. They grow nearly as large as the body of the tooth before the ossi- fication begins, and increase a little for some time after the ossification has begun. They are surrounded by a membrane, which is not connected with them, excepting at their root or surface of adhesion. This mem- brane adheres by its outer surface all around the bony cavity in the jaw, and also to the gum where it covers the alveoli. When the pulp is very young, as in the foetus of six or seven months, this membrane itself is pretty thick and gelatinous f. We can examine it best in a new-born child, and we find it made up of two lamellae, an external and internal: the external is soft and spongy, without any vessels ; the other is much firmer and extremely vascular, its vessels coming from those that are going to the pulp of the tooth : it makes a kind of capsule for the pulp and body of the tooth. While the tooth is within the gum there is always a mucilaginous fluid, like the synovia in the joints, between this membrane and the pulp of the tooth. When the tooth cuts the gum, this membrane likewise is perforated, after which it begins to waste, and is entirely gone by the time the tooth is fully formed, for the lower part of the membrane continues to adhere to the neck of the tooth, which has now risen as high as the edge of the guma. * PI. VIII. f. 4, 5, 6. f PI. VIII. f. 1, 2. branches. This is much more probable than to suppose that a new set of nerves and vessels is given off from the maxillary branches to join the pulps at a distance, through an intervening layer of bone of an indefinite thickness, to supply every new tooth. We now, therefore, find the new rudiment in a state nearly analogous to that in which the parent tooth was originally placed, and with similar relations to the surrounding parts; ihe sac above, attached to the gum, and the pulp beneath, (covered with its proper membrane,) connected by its vessels &c. with the jaws.] a [The statement that the bone of a tooth is produced from the pulp is erroneous. This substance constitutes only the mould upon which the ossification is formed, be-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996635_0002_0058.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
