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HISTORY OF DENTAL SURGERY 211

setting a pivot tooth. In answer to the question Who did it first ? Dr. Mills
:
said: "Dr. C. M. Richmond tells me that Dr. George Lawrence, son of Dr.
Ambrose Lawrence, of Lowell, Mass., made a practical use of this operation
of 'pulp knocking' in the mouth of his brother. Dr. A. S. Richmond, in
Chicago, September, 1878, upon a superior central incisor for a crown setting.
This practice had been in use by Dr. A. Lawrence for twenty-five years.
Who did it before this let some one else answer."
It may be questioned whether ''twenty-five years" mentioned above was
intended as a definite or only approximate period. It would seem to carry
the operation back to about 1853.
Dr. Kennicott, of Chicago,' in a discussion in tlie Western Dental Society
meeting in 1856, says he frequently e.xtracted nerves by driving into them a
hickory stick, and also sometimes filled the canal permanently with a well fitted
hickory plug dipped in creosote. He does not say how long he had used that
method.
CAPPING PULPS.
2 "Capping or covering an exposed pulp was practiced by D. C. Ambler
and others, as early as 18'i7, but was published to the profession by Koecker,
who describes it fully in his work (18'^6). He used for the purpose a plate
of lead, alleging as the reason for the selection of this metal that it had
cooling and anti-inflammatory effect on the pulp-substance. If the pulp
was wounded he applied actual cautery, placing the cap over the eschar thus
formed, and filling tlie cavity with gold. Upon publication of Koecker's
method, it was generally tested and received with favor. Other substances
for caps were tried; Fitch used gold,* * * Dr. Harris used no cap but
arched his filling over the pulp. Asbestos was early and considerably used
as a capping, or for the filling, being prepared with gums or collodion,
or rolled in gold foil. Gutta-percha (Hill's stopping), silk, charcoal, paper,
quill, tortoise-shell, and horn were experimented with. Dr. X. C. Keep intro-
duced oxychloride of zinc, which, through the advocacy of Dr. W. H. Atkin-
son and others, has obtained a more extended use than any other niaterial for
this purpose." (1870)
At present the oxyphosphate cements, gutta-percha, and oxychloride of
zinc are about the only materials used for the covering of exposed pulps
under fillings.

' News Letter, Vol. X, pp. 4-5.
History of Dental and Oral Science in America.