Page 14 - My FlipBook

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We know the teaching of our great Text-Book, that " there is
nothing new under the sun," and however much or little of importance
may attach to the two instances we have mentioned, we certainly know
that there are lost arts ; we know that there are undiscovered things of
utility, value, and beauty that marked and distinguished the civilizations
of the remote and beclouded past. May not this homogeneous and
imperishable tooth-filling have been one of them? and may not its
re-discovery emblazon the annals of *•' American Dentistry," and con-
stitute the grand and crowning achievement of its Academy of " Dental
Science "?
It is true we have metallic alloys, plastic phosphates, and vegetable
preparations and compositions that subserve a valuable purpose in
tooth-saving; but they, as well as gold, lack the qualities and charac-
teristics of " ideal filling," being unsightly, opaque, inharmonious,
and, as a rule, less permanent, less reliable, and far more perishable
than gold ; but it must be confessed that these materials are short steps,
if not strides, in the right direction, and point the way to our coveted
but yet undiscovered treasure.
Within the last few years — less than a decade — our prosthetic
department, which had been largely remitted to empyrics and artisans,
has been lifted from the slough of professional abandonment and
debauchery, rehabilitated, and rendered respectable; it once more
assumes its position as an honorable and honored department of our
calling.
The gold, platina, the aluminum and electro-deposited bases, the
capping and crowning of roots and stumps of teeth, the ingeniously
contrived and skilfully applied " removable bridge ivork^^' challenges
our recognition, excites our admiration, and commands our approval.
'Gold and platina are again dual sovereigns in the dental laboratory
;
whether they will be dethroned by aluminum, the wonderful new
metal, the future will determine.
As I have already intimated in discussing the operation of tooth-
filling, whatever metal may be employed in dental prosthesis, whether
gold, platina, aluminum, or some of the compounds and compositions,
each and all should be kept as far as possible out of view in the
mouth. Gold and other metallic bands and crowns are good things,
but broad conspicuous bands and solid gold crowns are sadly out of
place upon the roots and stumps of cuspid and incisor teeth.