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HISTOEY OF DENTAL SURGERY 233

diseases of the peridental membrane and the alveolus cannot be better treated
in some other way than by extracting and replanting the tooth, and the difii-
culty of obtaining suitable natural teeth in good condition and the reluc-
tance of many patients to have a tooth from the mouth of another person, es-
pecially a dead person, transferred to themselves, together with the infre-
quency of cases exactly suitable for transplanting or implanting, will always
render these operations infrequent. It is perhaps worth while to describe one
or two cases of unusual success in replanting. The writer's former wife
when about eight or ten year old, fell out of a swing and knocked out a cen-
tral incisor, which fell on the floor of the veranda where she was swinginff.
She had been forbidden the swing and did 7ioC want to be found out so slie
picked up the tooth and immediately pushed it back into its socket. The root
must have been incomplete at the time for it not only was reattached to its
socket but the pulp tissues reunited and the tooth had a living pulp at the
time of her death at the age of thirty-seven.
Dr. C. S. Case, of Chicago, related a case which was under his observation
in Jackson, Mich., of a boy about seven years old who knocked out a half
erupted central incisor whose root was not more than half its full length.
This lad was brought to a dentist by his mother with the tooth in her hand.
In this case the tooth and the socket were simply washed clean and the tooth
carefully pushed back to its original position, with only a portion of the
crown outside the gum. This pulp reunited, the root was completed, the
tooth normally erupted and is now in position with a living pulp, Dr. Case
having the young man under frequent observation.

FILING.
' "The reasons for the use of the file are given by Wooffendale, in 1783, as
follows : 2 'Teeth are filed on various accounts, viz. : to remove broken or
jagged points, which happen either from accident or decay and are liable to
injure the cheek or tongue; to stop the progress of a beginning or advancing
caries; to round off the edges of teeth (though not decayed or broken), that
grow irregular and prove troublesome to the cheek or tongue ; and lastly, for
ornament.' He adds, 'Some universally condemn filing the teeth ; on the
other hand, some are for having all teeth filed. * * * j apprehend some
teeth cannot be filed without being injured by it; others cannot be saved by
any other method.'
' History of Dental anti Oral Science in America.
Traetieal Observations on the Human Teeth, London, 1783, p. 156.