124 DEXTAL CYSTS. 



his ability. I send it because to me it is a very rare 

 case. I have now been in practice more than fort}^ 

 years, and I have not met with anything of the kind 

 before. 



'^At the reqnest of Mr. Barnum, a merchant of our 

 city and the owner of a breeding-farm in Westchester 

 County, I attended a two-year-old colt, considered to 

 be very valuable, as he comes from trotting stock. Mr. 

 Barnum merely said the colt had a discharge from the 

 base of the near ear, and that it had existed for ten 

 months. 



*•! found the animal so very shy on account of the 

 previous torturing of liis attendants, that I could not 

 approach him ; therefore I had to cast him. The in- 

 troduction of the probe failed to satisfy me that any 

 foreign body existed there; but on dilating the orifice 

 and introducing the most reliable of all probes, my 

 forefinger, I discovered a hard substance, which was 

 firmly attached to the temporal bone and surrounding 

 parts. I could not grasp the substance with the for- 

 ceps, therefore I used the handle of the instrument as 

 a lever, and after using great force dislodged it. Mr. 

 B:irnum picked up something in the grass four or five 

 yards from me, and it proved to be a molar tooth. On 

 examining the wound afterward I found some loose 

 fragments of bone, and on removing them they ap- 

 peared to be the socket of the tooth. 



"1 would have sent you a report of this case earlier, 

 but I was desirous of seeing its termination. Mr. Bar- 

 num says the parts have entirely healed and left no 

 blemish." 



Prof. William Williams advances an interesting the- 

 ory regarding the cause of dental cysts and also the 



