38 A MANUAL OF DENTAL ANATOMY. 



fifth nerve, the nerve of sensation of the whole side of the 

 face and head : the lower teeth through the inferior maxil- 

 lary nerve, the upper through the anterior and posterior 

 dental branches of the superior maxillary nerve. The 

 nerves are given off from the nerve trunks in bundles, 

 corresponding in number to the roots of the teeth for 

 which they are destined. For the details of the distribu- 

 tion of the fifth nerve the student must refer to works 

 treating of anatomy, as it would be out of place to enter 

 upon the subject at length in these pages, in which merely 

 one or two matters of special interest to the dental student 

 will be touched upon. 



In the case of the inferior maxillary nerve the roots of 

 the teeth come into very close proximity with the main 

 trunk of the nerve ; this is especially the case with the 

 lower wisdom teeth. Within a few days of writing these 

 lines I extracted a lower wisdom tooth (with forceps) for 

 a gentleman, who, immediately after the extraction, in- 

 quired if he could have bitten his lip, as it felt swollen; 

 on testing it I found slight but well marked numbness on 

 that side of the lip and chin, which did not wholly subside 

 before he left me. In this case a groove upon the under 

 surface of the much curved roots appeared to indicate that 

 the nerve trunk was in close contact with the tooth. 



No reason is at present known why the tooth pulp should 

 be so richly supplied with nerves, as no obvious advantage 

 results therefrom. Teeth with persistent pulps which go 011 

 growing throughout the life of the animal, have always large 

 nerves : thus a very large trunk goes to the pulp of a rodent 

 incisor. But although in this case the rich nervous supply 

 doubtless has to do with nutrition, and presides over the 

 great formative activity of the tissue, this does not fully 

 account for the pulps of the teeth of limited growth being so 

 amply supplied with nerves. 



As has been mentioned in the description of the lower 



