Page 264 - My FlipBook

248 HUNTER ON THE TEKTH.
the whole gum down to the Teeth ,vith certainty, when they
are pretty deep, requires some force.
The gums will bleed a little, which may be of service in
taking off the inflammation. I never saw a case, where the
bleeding either proved inconvenient or dangerous. If it
ever should be troublesome, I think there could be no great
difficulty in stopping it. In general no application is neces-
sary ; the gums soon unite at the most distant part from the
Tooth, if it lies deep ; and if it be more superficial, the thin
gum soon shrinks back over the Tooth, leaving it bare, and
decays.
This cutting of the denies scqnenticB is often attended with
an inconvenience, which does not attend the others ; and this
happens, I believe, only when they come very late, viz., when
the jaws have left off growing. This is the want of room
in the jaws for these late Teeth ; a circumstance which pro-
duces an addition to the other inconveniences arising from
Dentition. When it takes place in the upper jaw, the Tooth
is often obliged to grow backwards ; and in such a position
it sometimes presses on the interior edge of the coronoide
process, in shutting the mouth, and gives great pain. When
it takes place in the lower jaw, some part of the Tooth con-
tinues to lie hid under that process, and covered by the soft
parts which are always liable to be squeezed between that
Tooth and the corresponding Tooth in the upper jaw. To
open very freely, is absolutely necessary in these cases ; but
even that is often not sufficient. Nothing but drawing the
Tooth or Teeth, will remove the evil in many cases, (h)

(h) [When the development of the lower wisdom teeth is retarded
or prevented either from the position in which it presents itself, or from
want of space in the jaw, it often gives rise to more serious and dan-
gerous symptoms than those mentioned by Hunter.
Whenever the eruption of these teeth may take place, they ought to
be arranged at the back of the jaw in a line with the other teeth, but
sometimes they acquire a wrong direction, and the crown projects either
out wards or inwards. In the one case the tooth becomes buried in