Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882
Various
Science -- Periodicals
He maintains that it is not lack of nervous energy that causes this
disease, but the disease will lead to loss of nerve-energy. That small
purple ring on the gum of the cuspid in the case first mentioned would
eventually have led to the loss of the whole set, if left to work its
way unopposed. He had tried in these remarks to controvert the old
ideas, and to present the cause of the disease and its treatment as he
sees it. You may see it differently; if so, give us your information, in
order that we may correct our views, if wrong.
One gentleman says he finds it is only those who are strong and vigorous
who have this disease. The speaker finds some cases of this kind; he
also finds consumptives who have not a trace of it, but he would take
the strongest man in the room and cause a beautiful case of pyorrhea
alveolaris in his mouth in three weeks, with a fine cotton thread tied
around one of the lower front teeth at the line of the gum. The thread
will work its way under the gum, and the gum will become inflamed;
it will work its way down between the gum and the tooth, and in the
meantime the flour and the particles of food will also work down under
the loose gum, finding a rallying-point on the thread; the mass will
become impregnated with lime-salts, and will then begin to harden, and
in a very short time you will have an excellent example of the disease
under discussion. Patients suffering from salivation fall an easy prey
to this disease, due to the action of the drug on the glands and the
hard and soft tissues of the mouth, the gums in such cases affording a
ready pocket under their edges for the deposits.
When you find a tooth with the characteristic concretion of tartar upon
it, the first principle of surgery demands that you clean that tooth
thoroughly. Go down beyond the line of the disease, go around the tooth
thoroughly, and break up the diseased tissue, and apply tincture of
myrrh, and in three days you will notice a marked improvement for the
better, and if the patient takes proper care of the teeth the disease
will not return. Practitioners should watch the teeth of the young
people under their care, and see that the mouth is kept scrupulously
clean and healthy.
In reply to a question, Dr. Riggs stated that whenever absorption goes
on irregularly, unless the inflammatory action is extreme, it will
sometimes absorb one or two bone-cells, and then skip one or two, and
these last, being isolated, naturally die, or become necrosed to
some extent. In treating this disease you must break up the line of
disintegrated tissue. You must, as it were, transfer your eyesight to
the end of the instrument, so that when you strike dead bone you will
know it. Live bone will feel smooth and greasy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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