Page 52 - An essay on the diseasesof the jaws, and their treatment

— so AN ESSAY ON THE remedies as most speedily destroy the life of the tooth have been in general re- commended with the view of preventing the symptoms and morbid effects which accompany the process of gradual destruction, but which in reality hasten and augment, and even actually create the most powerful causes of the malady for the sake of which they are adopted : and hence such surgical treatment and opera- tions have been introduced, as, while they are intended to cure such teeth as are irreparably lost, injure and even destroy the health and life, as well of the sound teeth as of those more or less diseased. The most lamentable effects of such practices are their general adoption, on the authority of those writers, whereby not only discredit is brought upon this useful art, but also the greatest injury inflicted upon human health and happiness. " If general surgery were practised upon similar principles, what would be said of that great art, which now holds so eminent a rank from its real importance and utility in the estimation of every liberal-minded man ! Would it not sink beneath the lowest occupation, and would not its professors justly deserve repro- bation as destroyers of mankind ?" t It will be seen at a glance, by means of the Analytical Table of Causes accom- panying the Catalogue in the Appendix, (to which I beg to refer the reader), that the whole number of cases there brought together, may be divided into two great classes ; namely, first, those in which the causes are specified; and, second, those in which no causes are assigned:—the former amounting to 172 cases, the latter to 163. Dividing the first class of cases into groups, according to the arrangement of the text, we shall find the causes to stand thus 1. Idiopathic diseases of the teeth and sockets Ill 2. Constitutional affections 7 3. Peculiarities of construction of the jaws and teeth 9 4. Accidental, mechanical, and artificial causes 54 1. In regard to the first of these sub-divisions it may be remarked, that consider- ing the frequent occurrence and injurious consequences on the alveoli, of the disease known by the name of " absorption of the gums and sockets," we might expect to find it represented by a higher number. This being a disease almost always overlooked by the medical practitioner, there can be no doubt that many of the cases for which no cause is assigned might, by careful inspection, have been in- cluded in this division. 2. It is evident, from the small numbers of the cases re- ferred to constitutional vitiation, that those causes receive little attention; five of the seven cases recorded being dependent on the local effects on the mouth of the syphilitic and mercurial poisons. 3. As a predisposing cause associated with various primary affections of the teeth, anomarality of structure and arrangement of the alveoli and teeth, is, without doubt, very frequently overlooked. 4. The mechanical and artificial causes may be thrown into two groups, namely, twenty- six cases necessarily connected with idiopathic diseases of the teeth, consisting as they do of operations directed to the cure of dental caries, which indeed might with propriety be included in the first division, thus raising the number of the idiopathic diseases of the teeth and sockets to 139 cases; and twenty-eight cases of purely accidental causes not necessarily associated with any previous disease of the mouth. Of these latter twenty-eight cases, however, seven were accidents occurring to persons Avhose mouths were not in a healthy state. The second class, composed of cases having no cause assigned, speaks for itself. It consists of seventy cases totally unrecorded in respect to the early his- tory and original source of the disease: eighty-one cases, whose history contains