Page 1000 - My FlipBook

lUlO ABEASION AND EROSION OF THE TEETH.

protoplasmic bocly//'o»i a nerve-ending seems demonstrated. In the
explanation offered of the sensitiveness of dentine the impulse passes
along a protoplasmic body to a nerve-ending. The conduction in the
two instances is the same, but the impulse travels in the opposite
direction.
By this consideration of the facts at hand it seems clear that this is
the mode of transmission of sensation from the dentine. The dentine
has no nerves, and, with the peculiar arrangement of the odontoblasts
and their processes, nerves are not needed. The dentinal fibrils being
processes of the odontoblasts, and these cells being in physiological rela-
tion to the sensory nerve-endings, the conditions for the translation of
injury to protoplasm into the sensation of pain are complete.
These considerations also render sufficiently clear the reasons for
hypernesthesia of dentine and injury to the dental pulp by irritation of
the dentinal fibrils.