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HISTOKY OF DENTAL SURGERY 213

similar success. Dr. McClelland said he had such success with his fang fill-
ing that he considered it a crime to extract a tooth unless there was an abscess.
In the "Cosmos" for October, 1859, Dr. J. Foster Flagg says that his
father, after sufficient experience to warrant, about 1850, ])roraulgated the
method of using a small portion of cotton and creosote at the apical portion
—
of root canals, the remainder being iilled as usual with gold or amalgam "they
were all successful. He had no 'per cent.' in such cases." Dr. Flagg says he
iiad removed such a bit of cotton after nine years and "found it perfectly
pure and strongly impregnated with creosote."
The accepted practice at this time and previously appears to have been
to use gold for the principal part or the whole of root-canal fillings.
The "Cosmos" for May, 1862, quotes from the "New York Dental Journal"
for March au account of a root-filling in a central incisor, found a short time
previous in preparing the root for a pivot crown, which had been made 1)y Dr.
Hudson, of Philadelphia, presumably twenty-five or thirty years previously.
It was in such jterfect condition that it was drilled out only far enough for
the pivot. This jjulp had lieen destroyed by a red hot wire and the canal
filled at once.
There is much evidence that Dr. Hudson was an exceedingly thorougii
and successful operator with gold as evidenced by the great durability of nuiny
of his fillings. This same lady had good gold fillings in other of iier front
teeth made by him about the same tinu', wbcTi she was seventeen or eighteen
years old.
Prol)ably some operators filled the roots of teeth witli gutta-iiorcha soon
after its introduction to the profession as a stopping for carious cavities.
The writer's preceptor was doing so in 18(55. For how many years previously
he does not know. He used ordinary base-plate gutta-percha, heated in a
snuill porcelain dish over the lamp till very plastic and sticky, and carried
into the dry canal witli a hot instrument. This made excellent root-fillings
in places that could be kept dry and in canals large enough to be successfully
filled in that way. Afterward the plan of i)iim]iing the canal full of a solu-
tion of gutta-percha in chloroform and carrying into it a cone of solid gutta-
percha came into very general use and probably more root canals are now
being filled in tliat way than in any other. The method is open to very much
the same objections as the use of gold for the same purpose; namely, the gold
was occasionally thrust through the foramen, and was seldom packed closely
enough, especially in irregularly shaped canals, to prevent the infiltration of
fluids. The hard gutta-percha cone is also occasionally thrust through the lora-