Among these may be mentioned exostosis of the roots of teeth and nodules of calcific matter within the pulp canals in contact with a living pulp. The former of these conditions has been regarded incurable, the removal of the tooth with the united bony tumor being indicated. In favorable cases, however, this tumor may be excised and removed without removing the tooth. The pulp nodules of calcified deposits within the pulp chamber may be, in a large majority of cases, successfully removed without sacrificing the tooth. No one approves more than I the removal of the causes of disease. It is no more necessary to extract a tooth at the root of which an alveolar abscess has formed than it would be to amputate a limb for the cure of an abscess of the medullary substance of its bone. Disease of the eye sometimes requires that it be enucleated, but the honest, skilled ophthalmologist _would not_ remove the eye when he _knew_ he could restore it to usefulness. The spirit of the teachings of Dr. Sexton's articles is far from being progressive. Nor is this all; many assertions are not based on fact, but on erroneous impressions. Our duty to our profession and the laity is not to destroy but to save; and while ignorance is ever working its mischief in all vocations in life, it is not just to accept the results of such work as a basis on which to found a law. ARTICLE IV. DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF DENTRITIC CYSTIC TUMORS OF THE JAWS. BY JOHN S. SMITH, D. D. S., LANCASTER, PA. _Diagnosis._--Cystic tumors may be confounded with other affections which occasion swellings about the jaws, as enchrondromata, sarcomata, and myxomata, abscesses, and the collections of fluids in the antrum. Dental alveolar abscess may be distinguished by its acute course, and when in a chronic, condition by the discharge of its contents through the fistula, either upon the gum, or within the oral cavity. The tumor formed by an abscess is never so sharply definite as is the case with cysts; with dropsy of the antral cavity the distention of the facial wall of the jaw is more uniform than it is with cysts. In some cases of cystic tumors, they present so formidable an appearance at first sight, that they may be taken for solid tumors; especially is this so when their walls are compact and well organized, nearly if not altogether obliterating the sense of fluctuation when pressure is made upon them. Cases have come under the observation of the writer where it required the most delicate touch to detect any fluctuation when pressure was made upon the apex of the tumor.