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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![From its attacking certain teeth rather than others in the same head, and a particular part of the tooth, I suspect it to be an original disease of the tooth itself, and not to depend on accident, way of life, consti- tution, or any particular management of the teeth3. §.3. The Swelling of the Fang. Another disease of the teeth is a swelling of the fang, which most probably arises from inflammation, while the body continues sound, and is of that kind which in any other bone would be called a spina ven- tosa*. It gives considerable pain, and nothing can be seen exter- nally. The pain may either be in the tooth itself or the alveolar process, as it is obliged to give way to the increase of the fang. As a swelling of this kind does not tend to the suppurative inflam- mation, and as I have not been able to distinguish its symptoms from those of the nervous tooth-ache, it becomes a matter of some difficulty to the operator; for the only cure yet known is the extraction of the tooth, which has been often neglected on a supposition that the pain has been nervous. These diseases of the teeth, arising from inflammation, become often the cause of diseases in the alveolar processes and gums, which I shall proceed to describe15. * Natural History of the Teeth, p. 17. a [I have elsewhere mentioned a very curious case of an affection somewhat analo- gous to that here described. It consisted of the gradual truncation of the edges of the front teeth, both of the upper and lower jaw, extending back to the bicuspides. The exposed surface was perfectly smooth and polished, and the loss of substance extended so far that the cavities of the teeth must have been opened, but that they had become filled with a new solid bony substance, so transparent that it was only by touching it that its presence was ascertained. As the teeth never could have come in contact at the truncated part, and as no mechanical means had ever been used by which it could have been occasioned, the cause of this singular affection remains wholly unknown.] ,J [The affection here described is nothing more than a deposit of bony matter around the fang, produced, doubtless, by inflammation of the periosteum. The new bone is rather yellower and less opake than the original structure. Hunter has alluded here to the occurrence of nervous pains, produced by these cases. It appears probable that the pressure of the new bone upon the nerves of the periosteum of the alveolus, or of the alveolar process itself, is the cause of this pain, for it cannot be distinguished from local neuralgia produced by any other similar cause. Cases of this description are de- tailed by Fox and by myself, in which the only means by which the true seat of pain could be ascertained was by striking the affected tooth, by which pain was produced; and the extraction of the tooth at once exhibited the cause of the pain and effected its cure.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996635_0002_0091.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
