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MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN'S TEETH. 239
teeth. These are supposed to have been due to accidental mal-
positions of the developing teeth.
We may fill the roots of deciduous teeth after removing
the pulps that have become exposed from caries, or other cause,
the same as we may fill the roots of permanent teeth. But it
would be manifestly wrong to place arsenic in such a tooth to
destroy a pulp or to undertake to remove a dead pulp, treat and
fill roots in these teeth before the roots have completed their
growth and the pulp canals have been narrowed to minute open-
ings. Such a condition necessarily defeats the success of the
procedure. Happily, we are seldom presented with cases seem-
ing to call for such an operation at so early an age, but, occa-
sionally, these do occur. Then, if the age is close to the time of
the completion of the roots, a history of the age at which the
deciduous teeth were erupted becomes of especial importance in
the prognosis, and should often determine whether or not such
an operation should be undertaken.
ABSORPTION OF THE ROOTS OF THE DECIDUOUS TEETH.
The nest difficulty encountered is the absorption of the roots
of the deciduous teeth preparatory to the shedding process. This
is shown in brief in Figure 173. In this, the average date, in
years, in the life of the child, of the beginning of the absorption
is placed over each tooth. The progress of absorption, in years,
is represented in figures placed on the root of each tooth at the
point to which absorption has progressed, which may be read for
each individual tooth at a glance. These figures represent aver-
ages from which there are wide variations. Of late, certain
writers have used the phrase "decalcification of the roots of the
deciduous teeth," to which there is serious objection. We should
use either the word absorption, or resorption — not decalcifica-
tion. If we place a tooth in a weak solution of an acid, it will
be decalcified — i. e., the calcium salts, the substance which gives
the tooth its hardness, will be dissolved out, leaving the body of
the tooth, the basic animal substance, remaining. In this, the
normal physical and histological form of the dentin is preserved
in its completeness. In caries of the teeth the dentin is first
decalcified by an acid, leaving a softened mass which is afterward
decomposed, forming a cavity. Decalcification means somethiug
entirely different from what we mean by the word absorption, as
used to represent the physiological removal of the roots of decid-
uous teeth, or the removal of bone, or of catgut ligatures used in