Page 455 - My FlipBook

451

SECTION II.

MANNER OF FREPARING ARTIFICIAL TEETH PREVIOUSLY TO
THEIR BEING MOUNTED FOR INSERTION IN THE MOUTH.

, We have now considered the several materials of which
artificial teeth are made. I now wish to detail the mode of
preparing these materials previously to their being mounted
upon springs or pivots for insertion in the mouth.
Natural teeth are extremely liable to crack and split, when
they are, or have become dry ; consequently, to remedy this,
and to render them perfectly clean, they should be constant-
ly kept in alcohol or water, and should be rendered perfectly
clean by scraping them, and often renewing the water
in
which they are macerated. It should be a general rule nev-
er to insert one in the mouth, unless perfectly clean and free
from every impurity.
There is a great difference in the quality of natural teeth,
as regards their colour, shape, and exemption from defects,
which always modifies the price of them, and should be un-
derstood by the dentist.
Animal teeth should be selected of a handsome shape, with
a fine, smooth enamel, free from any inequalities on their sur-
face, &c. The teeth of neat cattle I prefer to any I have
ever used. They should be boiled in water, or soaked for a
long time : their fangs should be sawed off, and their crowns
kept in water, in the same way as we remarked of natural
teeth, as they are equally as liable to split upon becoming dry
for any time. As their principal objection is of being of too
white a colour, we should select those which are as yellow as
we can find them.