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228 HUNTER ON THE TEETH.
It is scarcely possible to draw some Teetli without break-
ins the Alveolar Processes. This in general is but of little

the patient was a healthy man, twenty-three years of age, and the tooth
a molar in the lower jaw. The bleeding continued ior thirty four
hours, and then stopped ; a large quantity of blood was lost, and the
patient was in considerable danger.
Dr. Richardson met with an instance in which haemorrhage occurred
in a man after extraction of one of the lower molars, and continued far
four days. The man was exhausted, and the blood was coming away
freely from the socket of the tooth. It was arrested by the application
of dilute nitric acid and pledgets of lint, after thoroughly clearing out
the socket, by syringing it with warm water. (1)
Mr. Mason Good, in his ' Study of Medicine,' has given the following
instructive case, showing the danger into which a patient may be
brought from the improper application of the means usually employed
for arresting haemorrhage after tooth extraction — " I was, not long ago,
:
requested to see a young man who had been profusely bleeding from
the gum and socket of an extracted tooth five days without cessation
and without sleep, till his wan cheeks and faint emaciated frame seemed
to indicate that he had scarcely any blood left in his vessels. He was
so weak as to be incapable of rising from his b^d or taking food, and his
stools, from the quantity of blood he was perpetually swallowing, had
all the appearance of a melcena. On opening his mouth, I found it
crammed full of lint and wadding, one piece having every hour been
added to another without a removal of the preceding, lest the haemor-
rhage should be increased ; whilst the blood in which the wadding was
soaked, and which had remained in the socket and over the gums for so
long a period, was become grumous, putrid, and intolerably offensive.
" I first removed the whole of this nauseating load from the patient's
mouth, and gave him some warm bran dy-and-water to wash it with. I
next directed him to take a goblet of negus, with a little biscuit sopped
in it, a part of which he soon contrived to swallow. The bleeding still
continued ; but, as I had little doubt that this proceeded entirely from a
waat of power in the lacerated arteries to contract, I applied no pres-
sure of any kind, but prescribed a gargle of equal parts of tincture of
catechu and warm water, and the hamioirhage soon ceased."
From the consideration of these cases, we learn the following import-
ant facts : First, wherever death has ensued, and we possess a full
knowledge of the circumstances, the patient has had the hemorrhagic

(1) On the Medical History and Diseases of the Teeth, By W. B. Richard-
son, M.A., Ml). P. 48. Loud., 1860.