140 ON CAPPING THE EXPOSED PULP. 



his practice where, on removing the temporary 

 filling, he " discovered a whitish and apparently 

 semi-translucent substance, slightly elevated from 

 the bottom of the cavity, of a conical shape, with 

 two or three red specks in the centre ;" this sub- 

 stance he '" at first supposed to be the pulp of the 

 tooth, but on touching it with an instrument, 

 discovered that it possessed but little sensibility, 

 and was almost as hard as cartilage." On removing 

 a second temporary filling from one of the same 

 teeth, after a six months' further trial, the whitish 

 protuberance was found to have become "sohd 

 bone, almost as hard as the surrounding dentinal 

 walls." Dr. Codman, of Boston, affirms that he has 

 succeeded in numerous instances in inducing ossific 

 inflammation, and the formation of a bony covering 

 over the exposed pulp, by simply removing the 

 decomposed dentine, and keeping the cavity in the 

 tooth filled with raw cotton. The time required to 

 efiect this varied from eight to fifteen months, and 

 the cotton was changed once a day. 



My own practice throws but little light upon 

 the subject, since those cases which have failed have 

 either done so too soon for ossification to have set 

 up, or under circumstances where no examination 

 of the tooth has been made. In one case only have 

 I had an opportunity of observing the result of 

 what I may term a successful operation of this 

 kind — ^it is the one marked No. 23 in my notes, 

 performed in March, 1855, rather more than two 



