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Surgical Treatment of Caries.

Having now considered, in a very brief manner, the most
common phenomena of caries, and having briefly mentioned
its causes and symptoms, we now proceed to a particular
consideration of the surgical treatment necessary and proper
for its cure, whilst the treatment of sound teeth, and the
means of preventing their decay, and the means proper for
preserving them in a healthy state, will be the subject of a
separate chapter. First,

The Treatment of Simple Caries.

This we denned to be a decay of the teeth, commencing
externally and gradually, proceeding to the internal cav-
ity of the tooth. In its progress discolouring the tooth,
producing a mortification of the affected part, by which
means the substance of the tooth, in some degree, is re-
moved, and continues to be so, until the lining membrane
becomes affected, and finally inflammation of it takes place
in a great many instances ; producing that most distressing
affection, the tooth-ache, called emphatically by the French,
" une rage do dens." If the disease itself does not produce
the tooth-ache, still it exposes the tooth to be acted upon by
external causes which do produce it.
If the teeth are not extracted during the inflammation of
the membrane, in consequence of the patient not being able
or willing to endure the pain of their extraction, then, 1 say,
the inflammation changes from the acute to the chronic form,
and in this state the tooth may remain for some time, until
by repeated changes from acute to chronic inflammation, and