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HISTORY OF DENTAL SURGERY 259

"In placing four or six pivot teetli it is necessary that the pivot of each
should enter its respective dental canal. When the teeth are adjusted and
fixed in the mouth, we take the impression of the whole with wax, that they
may all come out and remain in it. We then pour upon it enough plaster to
maintain them solidly united, then leave it to harden. The wax being re-
moved, we fix a metallic hand upon the posterior face of the teeth by soldering.
"We use clasps or branches of platina or better of gold, round or half-
round, but most ordinarily plates, whose bent extremities serve to fk to solid
teeth artificial pieces to which they are soldered or riveted.
"The writings of Fauchard and Bourdet make no mention of them, and
there is nothing said of them in the works printed in the first years of this
century.
"Maury said we should give clasps the form of a half circle, and Lefouion
said that the form of clasps varies necessarily, according to the form and dis-
jiosition of the gums themselves.
"The teeth were sometimes wound with non-putrefying thread where the
clasp touched them.
"Delabarre thinks it is better to rivet than to solder clasps to plates, so he
sometimes advises us, in order to accomplish this, to make clasps of wire suf-
ficiently strong to admit holes intended to receive the pegs; sometimes he
solders the clasp to a small solid plate, which he rivets to the principal plate.
"When the teeth which form the two sides of the vacancy which the piece
should fill do not a]tpear solid enough to resist the compression of the clasps,
lie gives to the branch which carries them a sufficient length in order to per-
mit it to extend behind many teeth until it reaches the one he judges fit for
a support; he also uses half-clasps, and small spurs which insinuate themselves
in the interdental spaces and prevent all shaking.
"Sometimes clasps are fastened to a plate upon a riveted pivot forming a
hinge (as an ear-ring).
"For ligatures we use hemp and linen thread, silk-twist, raw silk, platina
or gold wire, and Chinese root which is silk thread impregnated with resinous
gum, or Florence hair which is a species of silk taken at the time when the
silk-worm is ready to begin to spin, and which we make undergo a preparation.
Some surround the tooth with silk before they apply metallic ligatures.
"Some ancient autliors, for sustaining dentures in the upper jaw advise
fastening them to the gums or bone (Delabarre) with ligatures, but Fauchard
condemns the practice.
"Springs applied to double dentures, complete or not, nearly always go in
pairs. They fasten from each side to the same places, in order to equilibrate