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ON DISEASES OF THE DENTAL APPARATUS 
trituration which despoils the alible matters of their fibrous cortical 
envelops, they pass (if the term may be allowed) in a state of 
nature along the mucous membranes of the digestive organs, with- 
out yielding to the absorbents the elements for a sufficient re- 
paration. 
It is this that is produced when, under the influence of some 
cause or other, the dental apparatus is deteriorated, and is become 
incapable to fulfil integrally its functions. As a consequence, 
almost immediate, of this alteration, we observe the animals to 
become thin, to melt before our eyes , as the vulgar energetically 
say : the skin attaches itself to the skeleton, which shews in relief, 
by the rapid resorption of the subcutaneous adipose tissue, or, to 
speak plainer, of the fat situated under the hide, and thus demon- 
strates to all eyes the imperfection of the digestive functions : the 
muscular energy weakens, and the animals, vacillating upon their 
wasted extremities, are rendered incapable to suffer the least work. 
It is not, therefore, uninteresting to study with care diseases 
which produce such evil results, especially inasmuch as the cu- 
rative means at our disposition can be very efficacious in a great 
number of instances. 
Organization of the Teeth . — Our intention is not to enter into 
grand developments upon the organization of the teeth. For this 
object let us refer to special works, and particularly to the excel- 
lent monagraph of N. Girard, lately completed by his father. But 
there are some points of anatomy and physiology that we must 
recall to mind, in order to make our subject well understood. 
1. The teeth are composed of two substances, different in their 
colour, and especially in their densities ; — the one external, called 
the enamel ; the other internal, named the ivory. 
2. In the molar teeth, which must, in this place, be the principal 
object of our study, the enamel may be said to resemble a kind of 
ribbon, which forms, in refolding many times upon itself in the in- 
terior of the tooth, a succession of undulating planes, and constitutes 
the hard external envelop of the cubic mass of the organ : an idea 
of this disposition may be formed on examining a tooth which is 
not yet without its alveole, but which is near its expulsion from 
this cavity. Those which have made their eruption, and which 
have already triturated, present, at their tabular or crown-surface, 
besides the undulating line of the enamel envelop, a succession of 
reliefs, salient and sinuous, of the substance of the enamel, which 
are nothing else than the free border of this folded ribbon (if we 
may so name the enamel). It is in the intervals left between the 
folds of the enamel that is deposited the ivory-coloured substance 
which transforms the tooth into a solid, full, and resistant mass, 
when it has made its complete evolution without the alveole. 
