Page 121 - My FlipBook

ATBOPHY OP THE TEETH. 35
A histological examination of these shows the enamel rods
to be normal in their formation and continuous with the rods
deeper in the enamel, which is altogether normal in form and
color. Generally the smaller white spots that appear on the sur-
face of the enamel do not extend through its thickness. It often
ends abruptly in a line following the incremental lines of enamel
formation, i. e., the lines of Ritzeus, as seen in Figures 46, 47.
In the area of the white spot there is no cementing substance
between the enamel rods. This is the histological characteristic
of all of these white spots that I have yet examined. This is,
therefore, an atrophy affecting the formation of the cementing
substance between the enamel rods the same as certain of the
pits in the enamel are an atrophy of the enamel rods. While
white enamel usually occurs in small spots occupying but a small
amount of the surface of a tooth, they are occasionally much
larger, and I shall relate cases in which all of the enamel of all
of the teeth of the person was of this character.
WHITE ENAMEL.
I received fourteen teeth from Dr. D. J. McMillen, of Kansas
City, which had been extracted by Dr. John Prunty, of Boyd,
Texas, for one patient, all of which were deformed in what, from
macroscopic examination, seemed a similar manner to that
described in Dr. Callow's ease. The teeth were very dirty with
blood stains and from being handled, which obscured some of
their most notable characters. But a closer examination showed
the enamel to be soft. I found that it could easily be picked
to pieces, and evidently much of it had been lost in this way since
the teeth were extracted. The axial surfaces were made up of
irregularly formed spiculae that rendered them extremely rough.
Many of these had been broken, so much so, indeed, that it was
with some difficulty that I was able to get sections showing the
condition at the time the teeth were extracted.
When I came to the making of sections of these, I found the
enamel white through its entire thickness, not the white bluish
color of enamel, but the white color of unglazed white paper.
The enamel had seemed so frail that I had soaked the teeth in
thin balsam and then thoroughly dried them, in order to retain
the spiculfe of enamel. Afterward I was sorry that I had not
used shellac for this purpose, for in some of my sections these
spiculjE floated about in the balsam in which the mount was made,
as soon as the slight amoimt of hard balsam left after grinding
had dissolved in the softer balsam in which it was mounted. The