Three memoirs on the developement and structure of the teeth and epithelium, read at the ninth annual meeting of the British Association for the Encouragement of Science, held at Birmingham in August, 1839 / [Alexander Nasmyth].

  • Alexander Nasmyth
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three memoirs on the developement and structure of the teeth and epithelium, read at the ninth annual meeting of the British Association for the Encouragement of Science, held at Birmingham in August, 1839 / [Alexander Nasmyth]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are perfectly accordant with the cells of the pulp. (See [PL C. 8] Pulp, 9 to 16, where the yellow colour shows the ossified cells or ivory.) At an early stage of dental developement, the re¬ ticulated or cellular appearance of the pulp is par¬ ticularly beautiful. When merely a thin layer of ossific matter has been deposited on its surface,* it may with great facility be drawn out entire, * I am ready to allow that there is a certain degree of vagueness in this phrase, which, had the paper been intended for publication, I should have rendered more definite and precise. It contains, however, not the slightest contradiction or incongruity; and it is only the most unfair and malevolent criticism which could avail itself of passages of this kind, written as they were for oral delivery, with the accompaniment of illustrative diagrams, and not for the press, to impugn the general tenor of my communications, written and graphic. “ The fact is,” as I have elsewhere observed, “ that when the “ external layer of the pulp becomes ossified, it can no longer be “ regarded as pulp. It is then spoken of as a layer of ivory in “ apposition to and connexion with the surface of the pulp be- “ neath. Thus the deposition of ossific matter on the surface of “ the pulp, simply means its deposition in the cells of the reticular “ formative surface, which is undergoing the process of dentifica- “ tion. That the idea of exudation could not even have been “ floating before my mind, is proved by a subsequent passage, “ where I state that the manner in which the osseous matter is “ deposited in the cells of the interfibrous substance I had not been “able to discoverthe concluding portion of even the above paragraph proves the same: but it is useless to waste more time in demonstrating the monstrous absurdity of the assertion that my two papers on the structure of the teeth, and the diagrams exhibited in illustration of them, were in support of the theory of excretion or exudation !
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