Page 27 - An essay on the diseasesof the jaws, and their treatment

DISEASES OF THE JAWS. 5 which dental surgery stands by, and looks on at the heart-rending sufferings of such of our fellow-creatures as become the victims of this cruel malady. In the case of Mr. W., at page 130, Mr. Fox states, that for nearly five years, the disease was palliated by a repeated use of the lancet, under the direction of Mr. Cline; the unfortunate patient, however, was at length gradually destroyed by a malady, which, I doubt not, might have been cured in one fourth of that time, by a proper dental treatment of the various parts involved in the disease. I must not, however, be misunderstood ; for it is not my intention to censure either the surgeon or the dentist, as both of them adopted and adhered to the practice usual on such occasions : it is the inefiicacy of the practice that I wish to expose, and of this perhaps no better proof could be produced than the fact, that under the direction of one of the most eminent practical surgeons and dentists of this country, it was totally unsuccessful. I may, how- ever, be permitted to express my opinion, that the dentist who would be deemed deserving of the confidence of society, ought, in all matters which belong to his particular profession, to be directed by the competence of his own judgment, grounded upon a full and scientific knowledge of the principles of his art; and it can scarcely be denied that the management of the diseases of the maxillaj would be most advantageously entrusted, in all their stages, more or less to the care of one thus qualified.* * It would be unreasonable to expect that the mere tooth-drawer or mecha- nical dentist should have a proper understanding of the principles of the treat- ment of these diseases, and the pathological condition of the parts involved in them. Indeed, considering the complicated structure and sympathies of these parts, it is surprising that the general treatment of the teeth, and their imme- diate connexions, has been so exclusively given up to men ignorant alike of all the branches of medical science. From the fashionable dentist, who cements " dead teeth, and cultivates useful stumps" to the advertising impostor, who, in defiance of all principle, openly declares that he inserts artificial teetli without attending to the health of the mouth, and without extracting dead stumps and roots, how few dentists are there who treat the teeth as living bodies ! Yet, this fact of the vitality of the teeth, is the foundation on which rests all proper treat- ment of the mouth. Even medical men, in general, are not sufiicicntly alive to this main fact of dental surgery; and it would be well, if, instead of sanctioning the numerous means employed by dentists for hastening the destruction of decayed teeth, under the plea of curing the tooth-ache, they discoimtenanced all modes of treatment of the teeth, except such as are consonant with the principles of general pathology. IIow utterly at Yarianpe are all those practices, derived, aa