Page 58 - An essay on the diseasesof the jaws, and their treatment

36 AN ESSAY ON THE — The following instance of carcinomatous disease of the mouth is particularly illustrative of this malady, not only in its last stage, but also in its origin and progress. The subject of it was a patient of St. Thomas"'s Hospital, under the care of Mr. Travers, who very obligingly afforded me every facility in repeatedly inspecting the disease, and ascertaining its pathological history as correctly as possible. CASE I. F. Onion, aged 56, entered the Hospital on the 3d of May, 1827 ; and the account which he gave of his case in the beginning of July, when I first saw him, was as follows : Although originally possessed of a robust constitution, as long as he could recollect, at least for the last twenty-five or thirty years, his mouth has never been healthy. He had many carious teeth, dead stumps and roots, but he rarely submitted to the ex- traction of a painful tooth, generally permitting it to rot away. His gums were diseased and inflamed, and he frequently suffered from gum-boils, swellings of the face, &c. About six months previously to his entering St. Thomas's Hos- pital, he applied to a surgeon, in order to have a carious and troublesome molar tooth of the upper jaw extracted. It was at this time that he was informed of his perilous situation, of which he had previously entertained not the slightest suspicion. He was advised to enter St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he remained for a short time under the care of Mr. Lawrence, but soon left that institution. On examining his mouth, a truly appalling sight appeared. The greater part of the roof of the mouth, but particularly the right side and its posterior angle, with the velum pendulum palati was in a state of ulceration, extending about two-thirds of the semi- circle of the maxillary bone, including all the alveoli of that side, and those of the cuspidati of the left side of the upper jaw. The teeth of the affected parts, with the exception of a few small remnants of the roots of the incisors and cuspidati, had befen partly destroyed by ulceration, and had successively dropped out in a state of putrefaction, and the few teeth remaining in the