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DENTAL MEDICINE.
32
TOPICAL REMEDIES.
Medicinal substances are applied to the mucous membrane of
the mouth and to the dental structures almost exclusively for local
effects. In dental practice antiseptic remedies are extensively
employed to arrest fermentative and putrefactive processes, as every
kind of fermentation depends upon the growth and increase of a
living organism. Various diseases of the dental structures have
a close relationship with low organisms in the morbid processes
which result during their progress, and which are maintained and
developed by the presence of living matter. The remedies rec-
ognized as belonging to the group of antiseptics, when brought
into contact with the disease germs, which are constituted of
these organized forms of life, have the power of destroying their
vitality and of arresting the fermentative or putrefactive process
which they either develop or promote. The effect of escharotics
when applied to a part of which the structure and vitality are to
be destroyed, is to produce an eschar and incite inflammation and
suppuration of the adjacent tissues, by which the slough is sep-
arated from the living parts.
Medicinal substances are applied to the mucous membrane of
the mouth in the form of gargles or mouth-washes, lotions and
injections, and generally for a local effect.
Medicinal substances are applied to the skin for both a local
and general effect, either by friction, by the endermic, or by the
hypodermic methods. In the endermic method^ the cuticle is usually
removed by the action of a blister, and the medicinal agent is ap-
plied to the denuded surface in the form of a powder or ointment,
and is a useful method when the irritability of the stomach or
difficult deglutition prevents medicines from being taken through
the mouth.
Hypodermic Injection.—The hypodermic method consists in inject-
ing medicines by means of a graduated syringe with a sharp-
pointed nozzle, and constructed for the purpose, into a subcuta-
neous cellular tissue, thus producing both a local and general effect,
and an impression is made much more rapidly than when the
medicine is taken into the stomach. It is necessary that the
remedy should be applied beneath the skin, or mucous membrane,