Treatise on the natural history and diseases of the human teeth : explaining their structure, use, formation, growth, and diseases, in two parts / by John Hunter ; with notes by Thomas Bell.

  • Hunter, John, 1728-1793.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on the natural history and diseases of the human teeth : explaining their structure, use, formation, growth, and diseases, in two parts / by John Hunter ; with notes by Thomas Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    affected; and hence their teeth being of a larger size in proportion to the other parts, their mouths are protuberant.* Of the Cavity of the Teeth. Every tooth has an internal cavity, which extends nearly the whole length of its bony part.f It opens or begins at the point of the fan, where it is small; but in its passage it becomes larger, and ends in the body of the tooth ;J the cavity at this end is exactly of the shape of the body of the tooth to which it belongs; and in * rAs the arguments which are here adduced against the vascularity of the teeth are wholly insufficient, and in many respects inconsistent with each other it will be useful to examine into the true bearing of the observations on which (hTherefafi!me of all attempts to inject the substance of the teeth, when even the finest of the matters usually employed for filling the minute branches, °f arteries in other structures of the body, can scarcely be considered as f™10^6;^ the colouring matter is, in all of them, too dense and coarse, to.pass into the vessels of many other parts, which, though in the healthy conditlon.Jheydo not convey red blood, yet in a state of inflammation, become evidently injectedU I red particles. I have, however, on another occasion, alluded to two eye elusive facts, which appear unanswerably to prove the vascularity orthe, teeth. One is the occasional occurrence of red patches in the otherwise healthy bony structure of a tooth when much inflamed, discoverable by breaking or sawing asunder the body of the tooth immediately after extraction rhe other^the injection of a tooth with bile in cases of jaundice, of which I have.seen more than one example. In the former instance, the red patches are of rather a bright colour, until they become dull and obscure by time; and in the latter the whole substance of the tooth is imbued with a bright yellow colour. The experiments on madder would be far from conclusive on the point at issue, even were the details more complete. In the absence, however of all iniorma- tion respecting the duration of each experiment and especially the p rio»which elapsed after The madder had been discontinued before the animal was killed, it would be futile to combat the conclusions which Hunter has deduced from them Thus deficient, they only prove that the more highly orgamzed bones,:J» ™gnt be expected, lose the colouring matter of the madder by absorption sooner lhan the teeth. The paragraph in which the results are summed up, is perhaps as characteristic of the peculiar tendencies of Hunter's mind as any that can be found in his works. Concluding, from the failure of his experiment.with madder, and from other peculiarities, that the teeth are fjoid of a circnUtmn through their substance, and therefore to be so far considered as extraneous bodies', his intenselove of truth, which never suffered him even oescapeta dilemma by its slightest sacrifice, forces him to confess the existence of a living principle, because3 he found, from the result of 0th?^«PTe;3\BVeforVei » were capable of uniting with any part of a living body.'' Instead, ihe'retore%M endeavouring to render his theory consistent with itself, by disguising opervert f g one of ttfe two incompatible conclusions to which his observations had forced him he adopts them both, and is thus driven to the inference, that an organ can, Suhe aame Sme, be « an extraneous body, and yet possess^ a living principle, and be capable of uniting with any part of a living body. The truth appears to be, that the teeth are truly organized bodies, having nerve, and absorbent and circulating vessels, but possessing so.low ad gr ee of living power, and so dense a structure, as to exhibit J?h»^«'^{lJE healthy and diseased condition, which are very dissimilar from those which observed in true osseous structures.] ~ . fPl. III. f. 1,2, 3, &c. *lbla-