Volume 2

The works of John Hunter ... with notes / Edited by James F. Palmer. [With life and bibliography of Hunter by D. Ottley].

  • Hunter, John, 1728-1793
Date:
1835-1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of John Hunter ... with notes / Edited by James F. Palmer. [With life and bibliography of Hunter by D. Ottley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The patient must now finish the rest. He must be paiticulaily at- tentive at first, and give it as little motion as possible. In many cases a soreness will continue some days, and the gums will swell; in others there will neither be soreness nor swelling. The patient must take great care not to catch cold, or expose himself to any of the other common causes of fever, for such accidents are very likely to prevent the success of this operation. This caution is moie necessary7 in the winter than the summer. The tooth in some will begin to be fast in a few days, and the gum will cling close to it; while in others many weeks will pass before this happens, though the tooth may become fixed at last. I have seen the transplanted tooth come a little way out of the socket, and, without any art being used, retire into it as far as at first. The silk is to be removed sooner or later, according as the tooth is more or less fast; in some people after a fortnight, in others not till some months after the operation. This operation, like all others, is not attended with certain success. It sometimes happens that the two parts do not unite, and in such cases the tooth often acts as an extraneous body*, and instead of fastening, the tooth becomes looser and looser, the gum swells, and a considerable inflammation is kept up, often terminating in a gum-boil. In some cases, where it is also not attended with success, there are not these symptoms : the parts appear pretty sound, only the teeth do not fasten, and sometimes drop out. It also happens that transplanted teeth have a very singular operation performed on them while in the socket; the living socket and gum finding this body kept in by force, so that they cannot push it out, set about another mode of getting rid of it, by eating away the fang till the whole is destroyed, exactly similar to the wasting of the fangs of the temporary teeth in the young subjectf. I have all along supposed, that where this practice is attended with success there is a living union between the tooth and socket, and that they receive their future nourishment from this new master. My rea- sons for supposing it were founded on experiments on other parts J, in animals, and also observations made on the practice itself; for first I observed that they kept their colour, which is very different from that of a dead tooth; for a living tooth has a degree of transparency, while a dead one is of an opake chalky white. * I say often, because I do not suppose that it always acts as an extraneous body; because we know that dead teeth have stood for years without affecting the sockets or gums in the least. We may therefore suppose that it is sometimes the case with trans- planted living teeth. t Natural History, p. '13, PI. VIII. f. 1(>, 17. I Natural History, p. 55.