PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHXIC ASSOCIATION. 415 



Owing to the present style of living, natural teeth have become 

 subject to so numerous diseases that whole lives are spent in suf- 

 fering by a very large class of people, many of whom find it 

 quite difficult to explain the causes, because they are not aware 

 that the organism of the human frame is so intimately connected, 

 by means of nerves and vessels, with the teeth as it is. Every 

 variety of food that acts on the body injuriously, exercises a won- 

 derful influence upon the teeth, by inflaming and rendering spongy 

 the gums in which they are imbedded. If you examine a sound 

 tooth in the mouth, you will find the top much w^hiter than the 

 rest, because nature has placed there double the quantity of 

 enamel, which is protected by a peculiar cuticle, enabling it to 

 perform, without apparent wear, if kept well cleaned, its over- 

 whelming duties for a long period of years. The root of a tooth, or 

 in fact all that portion covered by the gum, is unprotected by ena- 

 mel. When a tooth is painful to you, have it examinedby a micros- 

 cope, and the manipulator will first discover a dark covering over a 

 small portion of the tooth, on removing which carefully, a nest full 

 of animalcules will be presented to his amazed sight ; as these min- 

 ute organisms increase in size, the enamel cracks, putrefaction and 

 decay then rapidly increase, until the nerve becomes exposed to 

 atmospheric influences, when infusoria, enlivened by the breath 

 of heaven and the subject, revel in the work of destruction, until 

 that beautiful member, so admirably designed by nature to mas- 

 ticate and divide the different matters requisite for the support 

 and maintenance of life, becomes a mouldering bone, arrayed 

 with gangrene and tartar, and filled with insect life. 



After this terrible catastrophe has taken place, substitutes for 

 the original must be found, and as the alchemists of old, attri- 

 buted to the precious metals sanative powers, the dentists of the 

 present age have called to their aid, platina, gold and silver, as 

 appropriate substances to form the plates for their so-called "in- 

 corruptible " teeth. 



I am convinced, in my own mind, that experience will ulti- 

 mately discard them all, and that some new substance will be 

 discovered to take their place, for the following reasons : The 

 gastric juice of the human system possesses acid qualities in con- 

 sequence often of sickness, bad digestion, &c., which oxydates 

 metals rapidly, and particularly silver. Gold, if it were possible 

 to use it unalloyed with copper and silver, would not be so subject, 

 but then it would be devoid of the requisite firmness, and there- 



