A dictionary of dental science, biography, bibliography, and medical terminology / by Chapin A. Harris.

  • Harris, Chapin A. (Chapin Aaron), 1806-1860.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of dental science, biography, bibliography, and medical terminology / by Chapin A. Harris. 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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it is important that the artificial should correspond in shade and color, with the natural organs, for in proportion as they are whiter or darker, will the contrast be striking, and their liability of detec- tion increased. But of the two, it is better that they should be a little darker than any whiter. Their outer configura- tion should resemble, too, the shape of those which have been lost or very nearly. As they are selected, they should be placed on the plate, and retained there by a piece of wax placed on it behind them. If they do not fit closely to the plate and gum, they should be ground on an emery wheel, or small grindstone, until they do, and be so arranged as to meet the teeth with which they are intended to antagonize, at the same in- stant that the natural teeth, which have antagonists, come together. The an- tagonizing models will enable the ope- rator to do this with the most perfect accuracy. As it is often necessary to cut away a considerable portion of a tooth in or- der to make it fit accurately to the plate, a number of emery wheels, or small grindstones, varying from three-fourths of an inch to six or seven inches in di- ameter, are required, and these should be turned in a small foot-lathe. After the teeth havebeen thus arranged and adjusted, a gold plate, large enough to cover the posterior surface of each, should be fitted to them in the following manner: each tooth has securely fixed in the back part of it, two platina rivets for the purpose of connecting the plate to it. Each backing, therefore, should have two holes punched through it, by means of a pair of dentists' punch for- ceps, large enough to admit the rivets of the teeth, and of the same distance from each other. The holes on the back part of the plate should be slightly enlarged, and after placing it on the tooth, it should be made fast by riveting or striking up, with a light hammer, the ends of the platina rivets. The gold backings of the teeth should be slightly hollowed before they are put on, so that they may fit up closely to every part of the back of each tooth, and the plate employed for this purpose should be nearly as thick as that used for clasps. After the gold plates have been rivet- ed to the backs of the teeth, they should be accurately fitted to the plate, and re- tained in their situation by the wax behind them. The gold plate, with the teeth and wax on it, should now be carefully re- moved from the plaster model, and placed on a large piece of charcoal, using the precaution not to disturb or dis- arrange the teeth. A paste, made with plaster of paris and water, of the thick- ness of thin batter, should next be pour- ed around them, until their outer surface and coronal extremities are covered to the thickness of half an inch. When this has become hard, the wax should be removed from behind the teeth. If it should be found, on the removal of the wax, that the gold backings do not all fit down tight to the plate, the aper- tures should befiUed with gold foil. This done, borax, triturated in water, in the manner as described in another article, until of the consistence of cream, should be apphed with a camel's-hair pencil to all the parts where it is wished that the solder should take eflfect, not omitting the platina rivets that pass through the gold plate on the backs of the teeth, for experience has proven that these can- not be made too secure. They should, therefore, be made fast by soldering as well as riveting. When the surface of the plate cov- ering the alveolar ridge is very uneven, greater accuracy may, perhaps, be se- cured in fitting the backings to it, by placing the plate on a piece of charcoal, after the teeth have been arranged, ground up, antagonized and fixed to it with wax, then covering their outer or labial surfaces, and coronal extremities, with a paste or batter of plaster, to the thickness of half an inch. After this has become dry, the wax may be warm-