Page 256 - My FlipBook

254

There is every reason to suppose that in this malady the
bone was carious ; the ulcers fistulous, and the nature of* the
pus sufficiently indicative. In a similar case, I should have
preferred the actual cautery to the two-edged instrument. I
should have carried the first even as far as the bone, and after
some similar examples which have fallen into my hands, to the
extent of the exfoliated caries, the ferment being absorbed,
the tumour would be destroyed insensibly of itself. It is
judged necessary to repeat the actual cautery as often as the
malady makes its appearance. I have had a poor woman
under my care who had a tumour very nearly similar to that
of which Lusitanus speaks of. It occupied the space of four
incisor teeth of the upper jaw. The teeth were all carious.
I extracted them. The tumour had two fistulous openings,
which run in the direction of each tooth, and which furnished
to each a fetid humour. With the actual cautery well heat-
ed in fire and double-edged, I made but one wound of the
four fistulous openings : I touched the bone that was carious,
which was repeated seventeen times in the space of three
months. In proportion as the exfoliations were made, the
tumour diminished. The patient was cured near the end of
the fourth month. In fine, the Surgeon-Dentist, volume I,
page 190, makes mention of two considerable excrescences
;
of the gums. He speaks also of some of them which ac-
quired in the order of time an enormous size, and degener-
ated into a bony or stony consistence, strongly adhesive, and
almost making but one body only with the osseous parts to
which it was intimately united.
These last excrescences, of which the author speaks, could
not be removed with the ordinary scissors, nor with the bis-
toury, the scalpel or other instruments of this class, nor yet
with the ligature. Then as they appear to resemble and en-
ter the class of exostosis, recourse must be had to a kind of