Page 203 - My FlipBook

person; they are looking for something to dodge from.
This condition is easily developed in some persons during
a series of operations, and it is particularly liable to be
developed by the process of grinding. I do not know of
anything that will develop that peculiar sensitiveness of the
teeth in all of their parts so quickly as a corundum stone,
particularly if it is allowed to run dry. Patients come to
rebel against this thing and all of the nerves of sense seem
to be set on edge, become acute, so that not only the tooth
that we may be grinding but all of the teeth partake of this
hypersensitive condition, and other tissues will come to par-
take of this hypersensitive condition as well—a rebellion of
the nervous system against this kind of interference. Now

this doesn't happen with all patients. Some patients who
start into these processes feeling fidgety and uncertain about
how they are going to bear it, as they go on with it settle
down to bear about so much pain and do it easier after hav-
ing obtained a start than in the beginning. We find these
opposite conditions among our patients ; some will come to
us with this hyperesthetic condition; some will, come to us
and go to sleep in our chair. Now this hyperesthetic con-
dition you must regard as a systemic condition, something
that is general to the person, not a disease of the teeth. It
does not, as a rule, render the teeth more liable to loss of
pulps than the teeth of other persgns. They may suffer
severe pain for the time; when they are relieved from that
the condition soon passes away; it is temporary in its char-
acter, and is not inclined to terminate in inflammation or con-
ditions that endanger the pulps of teeth. While I say this I
do not insist that considerable mutilation of teeth by grind-
ing or by cutting may not endanger the pulp ; the pulp will
be endangered usually in proportion to the area of dentin that
has been ground, the amount of it that is exposed to the
action of the fluids of the mouth later, or to the action of
thermal changes later, and where a very large amount of
dentin of the crown of the tooth is exposed to the action
of the fluids of the mouth or to thermal changes for a con-
siderable time, the pulp is in danger. We must always have
a care about the amount of mutilation of a tooth and the
amount of exposure after mutilation. But otherwise than
this we must regard hyperesthesia as a thing that will pass

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