Further on the author says that while the trepanning of incisors or canines almost always causes the pain to cease, by opening up an exit to the morbid matter retained within the cavity of such teeth, the same is not the case with the molars, these having several roots and several cavities, of great variety, which lend themselves but little to accurate trepanning. “Hémard,” he adds, “judges it necessary to extract these teeth, or at least to break off the crown (_les déchapeller_), in order to give exit to the corrupt matter that is closed up in the cavity; this sometimes causes the pain to cease. He (Hémard) says that he has seen many abscesses in the interior of teeth, which were not externally decayed, and that after having broken off the crown he found within the cavity a corrupt matter of an insupportable smell.” Relative to such cases, Fauchard says that, besides the teeth, also the surrounding parts suffer and are imperilled by these conditions. “The greater part of the violent fluxions deriving therefrom often terminate in abscesses and fistulæ of the gums and of the surrounding parts, and sometimes with considerable and dangerous decay of the bone, as I have related in some of my observations.” One sees that Fauchard was clinically very well acquainted with the grave forms of pulpitis and their possible consequences, although ignoring the true nature of this process, which has only been studied and illustrated much more recently. Chapter XL (page 177) treats of dental tartar, of its cause, of the harmful effects it produces, and of the prophylaxis and therapy relating thereto. Three illustrations which are added to this chapter represent the different aspects of a mass of tartar of exceptional size formed around the body of a lower molar. The surgeon Bassuel, a friend of the author, had removed this mass of tartar, together with the entire molar, from the jaw of an old woman. The mass itself was almost the size of a hen’s egg, the superficies being very irregular; it rendered mastication altogether impossible and caused the cheek to stand out in such a way as to give the appearance of a tumor.[427]