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all moveable and elastic ; the fungus on the gum filling the
cavity of the mouth, rendering the speech inarticulate, and
the poor sufferer's swallowing extremely difficult.
Case III*—Captain M , of the East India Company,
from Calcutta, laboured under a most distressing and com-
plicated affection of the mouth, the effect of an unparallelled
abuse of mercury, which had been exhibited only eleven
months previously.
He came to England, accompanied by a medical gentle-
man, on leave of absence from his regiment, to seek for sur-
gical advice, and visited Mr. Lawrence June 11th, 1826, soon
after his arrival in London, who requested him to consult
me immediately.
The patient was a tall, well-formed, handsome young
man, about twenty-one years of age. According to his own
statement, his health was originally excellent, and his consti-
tution strong, and only one year previously he was in the
possession of a complete set of teeth ; they, as well as all
their contiguous parts, being perfectly sound, regular, and
beautiful ; this was still evident from the appearance of the
remaining parts, which in the morbid and dead state, evinced
the most striking evidence of their previous perfection.
All the teeth, although entirely free from caries, or any
disease of their bony structure, were now perfectly dead,
and only mechanically held in their sockets. The perios-
teum was also totally destroyed, either by absorption or cor-
rosion. The alveoli were not only dead, but in a state of
putrefaction ; their upper edges all round the semicircle of
the mouth, being from an eighth to a quarter of an inch ex-
posed, and exhibiting from their cadaverous appearance, a

* An Essay on the Diseases of the Jaws, &ic. he.—By Leonard Koecker,
London, 1828, pages 63 to 69.