Page 202 - My FlipBook

mouth it was necessary to make wide cutting. At every
point I found extreme sensitiveness. After I had prepared
the cavity the question came to me as to whether that tooth
would be sensitive to pressure, whether or not it would
bear the same amount of pressure as the other teeth. The
buccal cusp was pretty strong, so that I didn't feel that
there was danger of breaking it by heavy pressure, so I
put the knathodynamometer into her mouth, placed it care-
fully so that it would come upon the cusp of that lower tooth,
and no other in the lower jaw, and asked her to close down
as strong as she could without too much pain. She promptly
gave me i6o pounds upon the cusp of that one lower bicus-
pid and said that it didn't produce any unusual pain. I
tried it upon the teeth of the other side and she did about
the same thing, and said that so far as pain was concerned
she didn't know any difference, although she had been suf-
fering for an hour nearly with the cutting of the, extremely
sensitive dentin of that tooth.
Now, this sensitiveness is not at all dangerous to the
pulp of the tooth, as a rule, although I must think that
the nerves of the pulp are unduly excited. This is probably
due to the carious process, the poisons that are absorbed
into the tissue, produced by the micro-organisms that are
producing the decay, or by other species accompanying
them. I do not think that all of this sensitiveness is due
to the acidity. If it were due to the action of acid we would
find it more general than it is. It is probably due to some
other micro-organism than that which produced the caries
that is at work in the decaying mass, producing a poison
that begets this peculiar sensitiveness.
There is another character of hyperesthesia of the teeth
that we will find more frequently than this one of which I have
just spoken ; cases in which all the teeth of the person are un-
usually sensitive. No matter how or where we cut in the teeth
of such persons we will find sensitiveness that is abnormal,
whether they are decayed or not we will find this sensitiveness
;
in teeth that we prepare for abutments for bridges, or any-
thing of this kind in which we may want to cut into teeth
that have not been decaying. Now, in this case the trouble
is systemic; it is not from any disease of the teeth them-
selves ; something has occurred to excite the nerves of the

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