The pathology of dental caries / by C. Spence Bate.

  • Bate, C. Spence.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology of dental caries / by C. Spence Bate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/100 (page 41)
    It may be stated as an objection that the free C 02 is so feeble an acid that it can dissolve but a very small quantity. I take this to be precisely an argument in its favour. Every practitioner will bear me testimony that frequently parts of the teeth placed under circum- stances most favourable to decay will resist the action for many years, or perhaps altogether; and, under the most rapid action of the disease, the time that is taken for the removal of the salts from the structure is considerable, when com- pared with that which an experiment upon similar substances would take in the laboratory. I believe that by the decomposition of the animal tissue upon the surface of the enamel carbonic acid is generated; that at the period of the union of the carbon with the oxygen exist- ing in the saliva at the very birth, so to speak, of C 02, it acts upon the bone-earth that is in immediate connection with it. I have in the previous portion of the paper shown that there is a tendency in the develop- ment of enamel to deterioration as it approximates towards the surface, and that the tendency of every species of deterioration is to admit of a preponderance of the organic constituent of the enamel over its normal relation to the inorganic. Thus I presume that if the enamel immediately beneath this defunct cementum is defective in its development, the death of the external membrane