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PYORRIKKA ALVEOLARI8. been possible to know how to cure or what constitutes a cure? The writer is not quite ready to assert positively that a cure of pyorrhoea alveolaris is assertion or reassertion of exce- mentosis ; but there are not lacking reasonable proofs favoring such a phenomenon. Whilst attending the World's Dental Congress at Chicago, 1893, it was the good fortune of the author to make the ac- quaintance of Dr. George B. Clement, of Macon, Miss., who is a skillful microscopist, and had prepared a number of mi- croscope slides mounting specimens of cementum cut from tracts that had been involved in pyorrhoea " pockets." Dr. Clement holds that " the lesion within the socket is a disease or result of a disease of the cementum ;" that it induces an obstruction of the lacunae and canaliculi by deposition of lime salts therein (obstructive calcification); that by this pro- cess the external structure of cementum becomes solidified, so that the physiological relation with pericementum is sus- pended, thus leaving the cementum practically dead. Start- ing from these premises Dr. Clement's conclusion is that there must be a reassertion of cementum over the obstructed tract in order to restore lost vital relations to cementum before a cure of pyorrhoea alveolaris is possible. Believing that to thus in- duce an excementosis is impossible, Dr. Clement holds pyorrhoea alveolaris to be incurable. The author is ready to confess that if the conclusions of Dr. Clement are correct the prospects of relieving the partic- ular suffering of poor unfortunate men and women would be unpromising indeed. The specimens exhibited at Chicago by