INTRODUCTION. U 



general notice, and have been described by Hunter and subsequent 

 authors on Dental Development. By most this phenomenon has 

 been regarded as evidence of the secreting function of the surface 

 of the pulp, and the dentine as an out-pouring from that vascular 



teeth, the conclusion to which Mr. Nasmyth had then arrived as to the * formation of ivory 

 by ossification of the pulp/ may afford some indication of the value of Schwann's facts, and 

 the cogency of his observations in establishing that theory. It is true that Mr. Nasmyth has 

 formally denied, in his subsequent Communication to the French Academy, (Comptes Rendus, 

 Octobre, 1842, p. 680), that he had any knowledge of Schwann's Treatise when he read his 

 Memoirs to the Meeting at Birmingham. Any one who may care to see to what extent 

 deliberate plagiarism from an original Author may be impudently attempted to be foisted 

 on the scientific public, as a record and evidence of original research, may compare the 

 ' Report' cited, with the observations, which occupy the whole of page 125 and part of the 

 preceding and succeeding pages of Schwann's " Mikroskopische Untersuchungen iiber die 

 Uebereinstimmung in der Struktur und dem Wachsthum der Thiere und Pflanzen, 8vo. 1839." 

 The unacknowledged abstract fills more than a column of the 598th page of the Literary 

 Gazette (Sept. 21). From the passage beginning with "According to Purkinje," and ending 

 with " and of the dental bone," the report of Mr. Nasmyth's Memoir, excepting that where 

 Schwann asserts " Mr, Nasmyth observes," and that where Schwann believes " Mr. Nasmyth 

 presumed," is a coarsely literal translation of the German Author. 



Some of the borrowed paragraphs might have excited a doubt, if rightly understood by 

 Mr. N., of the truth of the idea at that time maintained by him, of the formation of dentine 

 " by the calcification of detached cells on the formative surface of the pulp," or " of the 

 deposition of the ivory by thin ossific layers on the surface of the pulp." As, for example :— 



Schwann, I. c. p. 125. Literary Gazette. I. c. p. 598. 



" Diese in die Lange gezogenen kugel- " ITiese longitudinally drawn out glo- 



chen sind nun ofienbar cyUndrische bules, Mr. Nasmyth observed, are plainly 

 Zellen." cylindrical cells " — Jlso Medical Gazette, 



Jan. 3rd, 1840, p. 540. 

 "Da sie auf der anderer Seite doch "As they cohere more firmly with the 

 mit der Zahnsubstanz fester zusammen- dental substance than with the pulp, 

 hangen als mit der Pulpa, und an der and remain attached to the former, Mr. 

 ersteren hangen bleiben so vermuthe ich, Nasmyth presumed that here a transition 

 das bier ein Uebergang statt findet." takesplace."— Literary Gazette,\.c. p. 598, 



and Medical Gazette. 1. c. p. 541. 



