Dental caries, a critical summary : and The prevention of dental caries.

  • Sewill, Henry
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dental caries, a critical summary : and The prevention of dental caries. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/84 (page 28)
    in a part may occur independently of inflammatory action, and yet, we presume, deserve the appellation of pathological.” From a literary point of view, this is certainly a most astonish- ing passage; a wonderful specimen of tortuous involution which, containing a rare collection of errors in syntax, might well be set for correction as a test of the grammatical knowledge of students at a preliminary examination, and it at least deserves preservation among the “ Curiosities of Literature,” as a sample from a work made up mainly of similar stuff, which in these days of “ pre- liminary examinations ” (not to speak of School Boards and com- pulsory education) could be seriously put forth for the instruction of students in the concrete facts of a subject in natural science. I recollect a certain author’s style being described as worthy to be termed lucid by virtue of the ease with which it might be seen through, but the opacity of the above is baffling, and it is possible to catch no more than a glimpse of any solid statement within the enveloping cloud of words. The meaning, however, may be guessed-—which, I repeat, is more than can be said of most of the “ impressions ” recorded on the subject of dental pathology. And here is another utterance of the same author which may help us in our guess work from falling far from the mark:— “And then, with regard to the evidence of this acid state of the saliva, he had himself, many years ago, made a very large number of observations upon this point, expecting to be able to connect an acid condition of the saliva with, at all events, very active or acute cases of caries. But he obtained no such result. In cases of pregnancy and those convalescent from the exanthemata, the conclusion was the same, and yet in such cases it often occurred that teeth which, until these conditions supervened, had been excellent, then underwent very rapid decay. This had led him to doubt very much a simply acid cause for caries, and had brought him to believe that the greater liability to disease in such cases arose from a lowering in the power of resistance of the teeth to agencies external to them,—that is to say, to the or- dinary laws of chemical affinity.” It is difficult to render into plain language statements whose principal terms really transcend comprehension, but I think we may not unfairly paraphrase these utterances thus :—The dental tissues aro, probably pervaded by vital force. This force—if it really exist—is a distinct entity which, diffused through the sub- stance of the tissues, maintains their vitality and prevents their spontaneous decomposition. From diminution of this force, or from abatement of some other inherent potentiality (the “ pre- vailing something”) equally occult and indefinable, enamel and