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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![Stuffing the 'hollow tooth with wax, galbanum, &c. can be but of very little service, as it is in most cases impossible to confine these sub- stances, or preserve them from being soon worn away; however, they have their uses, as it is a practice which the patients themselves can easily put in execution. It often happens from neglect, and much oftener in spite of all the means that can be used, that the tooth becomes so hollow as to give way, whereby the passage becomes too large to keep in any of the above-mentioned substances ; however, in this case, it sometimes hap- pens that a considerable part of the body of the tooth will still stand, and then a small hole may be drilled through this part, and after the cavity has been well stopped, a small peg may be put into the hole, so as to keep in the lead, gold, &c. But when this cannot be done, we may consider the broken tooth as entirely useless, or at least it will soon be so; and it is now open to attacks of inflammation, which the patient must either bear, or submit to have the tooth pulled out. If the first be chosen, and the repeated inflammations submitted to, a cure will be performed in time by the stump becoming totally dead; but it is better to have it pulled out, and suffer once for all. Upon pulling out these teeth we may in general observe a pulpy substance at the root of the fang, so firmly adhering to the fang as to be pulled out with it. This is in some pretty large, so as to have made a considerable cavity at the bottom of the socket. This substance is the first beginning of the formation of a gum-boil, as it at times inflames and suppurates3. 3 [The operation of filling the teeth is much better understood in the present day than it was at the time when the foregoing directions were written. Notwithstanding the numerous experiments which have been made, and the innumerable quack nostrums which have been introduced to the public with promises which from their universality ought at once to be disbelieved, there is still no method of filling teeth with success where the pulp is exposed, and no substance which for durability and comfort can be compared to pure gold. All the amalgams, pastes, cements, or fusible metallic compo- sitions, some of them ingenious and plausible, have insuperable disadvantages. It is not meant that they may not in some few cases partially succeed where a tooth will not bear the pressure necessary to render the gold sufficiently firm and solid, but in almost all cases where these are available gold would be much more so. In order to employ this mode of retarding or preventing the progress of decay with the greatest effect, the pulp must not have been exposed. In fact the operation should be had recourse to as soon as the enamel has given way, or even earlier, and the de- cayed part can be drilled out of the tooth. When it has gone still further, the decayed portion must be entirely removed by means of little instruments adapted to this pur- pose, and the cavity being made perfectly dry, the gold, beaten of a proper thickness, is to be carefully pressed into the cavity until it is completely and solidly filled.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996635_0002_0089.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
