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and therefore productive of the most injurious mal-practices
in the treatment of this disease.
Putrefaction acting upon a dead tooth, destroys the bone
by immediate chemical action, and produces a direct change
from a state of mortification to that of putrefaction. It
therefore naturally finds the greatest resistance in the hardest
and least vascular parts of the tooth.
But putrefaction in the form of caries of a living tooth,
destroys the bony parts, with which it is placed in immediate
contact, in an indirect manner, producing by its chemical irri-
tation, in the first place, inflammation, and afterwards morti-
fication. It is in this instance, therefore, much more actively
resisted in its destructive influence by the vascular than by
the hard parts of the toofh. Consequently as the bony struc-
ture of the tooth is more vascular the nearer it is to the lin-
ing membrane, and harder and more compact the nearer it
is to the enamel ; and, therefore, endued in proportion to its
vascularity, with a greater or less power of resisting inflam-
mation ; the diseased action of caries, will proceed more
rapidly towards the exterior, than towards the interior of a
tooth, and invariably produce an outlet at some part of its sur-
face, before it can come in contact with its lining membrane.
Although the enamel of the tooth, from its not being orga-
nized, is not subject to the immediate influence of inflamma-
tion ; and although, from its crystaiine nature, it is also most
admirably calculated to resist putrefaction and other chemi-
cal influences ; it is nevertheless, from its peculiar structure,
easily destroyed by mechanical causes when once deprived
of the support of its bony structure ; consequently, where
caries has destroyed that support, it is soon removed by mas-
tication, and an external orifice to the carious cavity is thus
produced.
When the disease has thus made itself an outlet, through