Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Souvenir. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![did not at the time know anything about the dental tissues, he at once acknowledged that the reaction in the dentine was inflammatory in its character. I asked him, Are there any bacteria present? He replied, There are plenty, but the reaction of the protoplasm is so evident that I am perfectly convinced it cannot be from bacteria alone. Dr. W. W. Walker. Gentlemen, our president, Dr. William Carr, has seen fit to provide, between the hours of six and eight o'clock this evening, a collation for our guests who have so kindly volun- teered to come here from distant cities to assist in this debate. Therefore, if those who have been furnished with tickets will be kind enough to remain after adjournment of this meeting we will be very much obliged to them. Adjourned until eight oclock p. m. EVEN I NG SESSION. Dr. J. L. Williams. Mr. President and Gentlemen: I crave your kind indulgence just two or three minutes. There seem to me to be only two points in Dr. Heitzmann's paper that I care to make any reply to,—two points that seem to me so manifestly absurd that I must say just a word or two. I have cut a good many hundred specimens of pulps of embryo and adult teeth, and I never saw any different appearance from that presented there [ illustrating on the blackboard ] of the odontoblast layer of cells before the commence- ment of the process of calcification. There are present here at least four gentlemen who have made almost a life-study of this subject, and I think they will bear me out in the statement that in all the speci- mens they have cut they have never seen any other appearance than substantially that,—the cells having that form of a prolongation of the dentinal fibrillar coming out from there in this manner, some- times one, sometimes more, to the extent of a dozen, more or less. This is, as nearly as my memory serves, a representation of it on the board. May be Dr. Heitzmann has, but in all the specimens I have cut I have never seen an appearance like that which he has shown, not one; and I think the gentlemen who have spoken before me will bear me out, and say that they have never seen, after the commencement of calcification, an appearance like that. Now, in regard to the fibers in enamel. (You see I have a teachable dispo- sition. I may remark that this drawing is after the improved stylo of Dr. Heitzmann.; Now, suppose the section of enamel represented had been cut directly through at the point which I indicate. This](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21230237_0057.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
