58 Dr. Mac CuUoch onFevers^. 



under the general principle, we must content ourselves with 

 a few remarks on the utility or application of these new 

 views. 



This is what relates to the cure of this frequent and painful 

 disorder ; though, as we cannot undertake to abridge even 

 that, we must limit ourselves to stating what is said generally 

 respecting extraction. Having demonstrated the inefficacy 

 of the barbarous practice of dividing the nerve in the com- 

 mon tic-douloureux, the author here shows that, in the cases 

 of toothach, as it is reputed, with sound, and even often 

 with carious teeth, the practice of extraction is equally 

 abused, and is often equally inefficacious. In these cases, if 

 the disease is in reality always a neuralgia, it is often, even 

 obviously, that disorder in its plainest form ; while, being 

 termed toothach, and from the habit of applying extraction 

 to that disorder, as well as its facility, and also from the de- 

 fective education or absolute ignorance of diseases of those 

 who practise as dentists, it is resorted to with consequences 

 to the patient that are often very grievous ; since, full often, 

 the pain continues or returns after extraction, while the 

 injury experienced from the loss of teeth is not only a great 

 deformity but a serious evil. And if he alludes to cases 

 where whole rows of teeth have thus been sacrificed, often 

 to no purpose, even in young persons, he has stated what 

 must be familiar to every one ; while we really are not sur- 

 prised at his surprise, that such a practice should still be 

 persevered in, even by educated physicians, and that a rea- 

 soning so very obvious as he has rendered this, should never 

 before have struck any one. And, as we go along with his rea- 

 sonings, we cannot help concluding that the consequences of 

 these new viev/s of toothach will become inestimable to the 

 " rising generation," as he terms it : since all that inconve- 

 nience and deformity produced by the loss of teeth will thus 

 be prevented in future, and for ever ; while the cure of the 

 pain, so seldom effected by these barbarous and ignorant 

 proceedings, will be found in the general remedies applicable 

 to all neuralgia ; namely, in the tonic system. 



But we must pass on to the only other disorder of this 

 nature on which we can afford now to speak, and which we 

 should not be justified in omitting, important, common, and 

 mistaken as it is. This is the neuralgic ophthalmia, as it is 

 here termed, occupying a chapter to itself, and treated in a 

 very full and satisfactory manner. That it had been con- 

 founded with common inflammatory ophthalmia till very 

 lately, is well known to at least our medical readers : 



