Page 292 - My FlipBook

358 : HISTOIJY OF DENTAL SURGERY :

"Metliods of fixing and maintaining artificial dentures in the raouth are:
First, by that which we shall call gomphosis, or implantation as pivots; sec-
ondly, by coadaptation as cuvettes—plates—simply juxta-placed ; thirdly, by
compression, as with clasps; fourthly, by attraction, as ligatures; fifthly, by
reaction, as springs.
"The metiiod of implanting a pivot in a root are: The seal pivot of
Fauchard; the screw pivot of Bourdet; the clacking (like the clasp to a brace-
let) tenon of Maggiolo ; the suberique pivot furnished with cork by Ricci ; the
tenon a antennes; the perforated tenon, etc.
"Some are tbced with a screw in the hole in the root, a gold cylinder, of-
course hollowed, and screw-sliaped in its entire length, within and without;
then they place a screw cylinder in the artificial tooth of a diameter equal to
that in the root. Wlien the two tubes are arranged, they construct a screw
without a head, of a thickness proportioned to the diameter of the cylinders,
put the tooth in place, introduce into the cylinder which traverses it the screw
which they turn in order to fix it in the root, and the tooth superplaced upon
the root has greater stability than in any other procedure."
This method was used by Uumergue, Talma, Maury and Tompson. Desira-
bode continues
"As to the precaution that Delabarre takes of fastening the pivot by a
transverse peg, introduced between the gum and the root by an opening made
in this latter by means of a very delicate drill, it is more specious than rational.
"Materials which wc have used around pivots, viz.: cotton, thread, hemp,
silk, and the substitutes proposed, are amianthus, birch bark, lead, gold and
platina in thin leaves wrapped around tlie pivot.
"WHiere the canal has been largely destroyed by decay, use two pieces of
soft wood cut in the form of a V, so thin that they may be rolled around the
pivot, then set the tooth, and the humidity will cause the wood to swell and
hold the tooth in place.
"We sometimes in similar cases employ a kind of sealing or cramping,
made with the fusible metal of Darcet, with which we fill the canal of the
tooth, in order to jilunge the pivot in during its fusion; this is particularly
applicable to mineral teeth, whose pivot we heat.
In those times many pivot teeth were removed at the patient's will for the
purpose of cleansing and then replaced. The autlior continues
"Miel invented an instrument for the removal of broken pivots ; it is a
small trephine, with a tube in the center for the broken pivot, and whose walls
form two l)ranclips, and are susceptible of elongation and contraction. The
small steel tube terminated by saw teeth, forms a miniature drill.