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HISTORY OF DENTAL SURGERY 203

was baked. He had such fillings made more than two years previous which
Dr. L. L. Davis said he had had opportunities to see many
were still perfect.
fillings put in by Dr. Laiul according to the method described by Dr. Thomas,
and would not wish to have any such in his mouth or in his practice. In the
same volume of "Cosmos," page 353, Dr. J. M. Comegys of St. Albans, Vt.,
claims to share with Dr. Thompson the honor of using gum colored porcelain
for an inlay. He had made it in a platinum matrix with pins in the root and
covered the required portion of the porcelain with gum enamel.
Dr. Melotte in the Union convention of the Fifth, Si.xth, Seventh and
Eighth District Dental Societies of New York, in a discussion on "Porcelain
Tips," said that in the "Universal Medical Annual," Volume 111, page 5G4, was
an article on this subject by Professor J. Bond Littig, of New York, present-
ing two methods which are practical, the second of which he had tried in
several cases of alu'aded and atrophied teeth with living pulps. One, a cuspid,
was ground otf smooth and flat to the extent of the atrophied defects. A cross
pin tooth was chosen with thickness a little more than the length of restoration
required. ^Vith a trephine of the same diameter as the distance lietwecn the
pins, a circular groove was cut one-sixteenth of an inch in depth. A plantinum
tube was made of the same diameter, a trifle shorter than tlie depth of the
groove. Slots were cut for the pins, which were shortened to allow the tube
to rest against the tootli, and the tube soldered to pins. The tooth, with tube,
was placed in position and with pumice stone or corundum and water the piece
was rotated till the Joint of the piece of tooth with the end of the natural tooth
was ground to fit, when the overhang of porcelain was ground away (mostly
out of the mouth). Notches were cut in the tube to assist displacement of
excess of cement, and set with zinc phosphate, rotating firmly till excess of
cement was removed.
At the meeting of the American Dental Association for 1889 ('"Cosmos,"
Vol. XXXI, p. 868), Dr. George L. Curtis of Syracuse, N. Y., read a trans-
lation of a paper by Dr. Wilhehn Herbst, of Bremen, Germany, entitled,
"Glass as a Filling Material." "Two kinds of glass are necessary, milk glass
from a broken lamp globe, and brown glass." These were finelv pulverized,
washed and dried, several impressions were taken of the cavitv and plaster
models made. Eight parts of the milk glass were mixed with one part of the
brown and wet with water, the models being saturated also. The cavities in
the models are filled three-fourths full of the powdered glass, dried with a
linen cloth and then heated, after which the glass is melted by a Bunsen burner.
Several meltings are usually necessary and the shade can be changed in sub-