Page 28 - An essay on the diseasesof the jaws, and their treatment

6 AN ESSAY ON THE It is, moreover, but just to state, that it is impossible for the surgeon, who has not had the opportunity of making dental sur- gery his most particular study, to be capable of observing these maladies, and watching them with the necessary accuracy during a gradual and protracted progress, generally occupying a period of from five to ten, and sometimes even twenty-five or thirty years, before they arrive at their ultimate, and often fatal termi- nation.* This difiiculty may, probably, have given origin to the very incorrect name of " Diseases of the Maxillary Antrum;" and to it also may be attributed the common and erroneous belief of their spontaneous origin in the cavity or mucous membrane lining the cavity of the jaw. Nor, without this particular attention, is it possible for the general surgeon to become sufficiently acquainted with the curative efiecta of any system of treatment; hence arises, not only the erroneous supposition of the incurability, and the consequent passive treat- ment of the diseases in question, but also the determination to they are, from that school which regarded the teeth as non-vital bodies, with our actual knowledge of the structure of these organs, which are now acknowledged to be so highly organised as to warrant Dr. Graves in styling them " the fingers of the mouth," in allusion to their peculiar and exquisite sensibility. * The same careful, minute, and continued attention, is necessary in studying the idiopathic affections of the teeth themselves, the recognition of whose causes requires considerable experience. " Idiopathic diseases," to quote from another of the author's works, " while they only affect parts of so limited a nature as the lining membrane of a tooth, are capable of almost overwhelming the entire system by nervous irritation, so as even to produce actual madness, but are, nevertheless, for the most part, to be detected only by dint of a most minute acquaintance with the pathology of the parts immediately concerned." (See Dr. Eush's " Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind," page 35.) " The difficulties here supposed are owing to the great variety of circumstances accompanying the diseases of the teeth, namely, the different aspects which they assume ; the manifold effects and symptoms produced by them ; the comparatively small and hidden parts and surfaces, which the idiopathic maladies occupy, on the one hand, and the greater or smaller distance, and the greater extent of the parts and their surfaces, which are sympatlietically affected, on the other; the sudden changes of the symptomatic affections from one place to another, the frequent absence of pain or the comparatively slight pain accompanying the idiopathic local malady, and the consequently greater pain accompanying the symptomatic affection, together with the frequent translations of the nervous and rheumatic-like pains from the parts primarily diseased to those which are second- arily affected, and vice versa .-—all are of such a deceptive nature as to be not a — little calculated to mislead any medical practitioner, who has not very just notions on the subject." " Koecker's Principles of Dental Surgery," page 105.