Page 95 - My FlipBook
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tion in some children, and the slowness of it in others.
There are a few instances of children at birth having one or
two of the incisores already cut, and in such cases it is often
necessary to remove them immediately ; on the contrary, in
children apparently healthy, they have not begun to appear
till the first, second, or even the third year. They for the
most part appear in pairs, or the two corresponding with
each other, nearly at the same time. The first are the
middle incisores of the under jaw ; in a few weeks after the
middle incisores of the upper ; in a month or six weeks after,
we have reason to expect the lateral incisores of the under
jaw, and in a short time after those of the upper ; about the
twelfth or fourteenth month, the anterior or small grinders
of the under jaw appear, and frequently about the same
time those of the upper ; about the sixteenth or twentieth
month the cuspidati appear first in the lower jaw, and from
the twentieth to the thirtieth month the posterior or large
grinders appear in the same order : so that in general about
the second or third year, the twenty temporary teeth are
complete. We must not expect however to find the teeth
always appear in the precise order I have just now mention-
ed. I have frequently met with some irregularities, such as
one tooth appearing a considerable time before its fellow
;
all the incisores of the under jaw appearing before any of
the upper ; and the reverse, though very seldom, has some-
times taken place : the anterior grinders sometimes appear
sooner than the lateral incisores, and the lateral incisores of
the upper jaw, sooner than those of the under. I have some-
times observed the posterior grinders appear earlier than the
cuspidati ; but I never saw an instance of the cuspidati ap-
pearing previous to the small grinders ; sometimes three or
four teeth appear nearly at the same period, but I never met
an instance of the cuspidati and grinders appearing in such