IN HERBIVOROUS ANIMALS. 
231 
TREATMENT OF CARIES. 
The only remedy for caries of the teeth, in the immense ma- 
jority of cases, is the evulsion of the diseased organ. 
Certainly, if we were called upon to treat this affection at its 
debut , it would be possible to arrest its progress by cauterising 
deeply the blackish excavation, which is one of the first cognizable 
symptoms of this disease ; but if caries does not manifest itself by 
sensible symptoms until the disease has sufficiently progressed to 
attack the dental bulb, and so exalt its sensibility even unto acute 
pain, it may have undermined almost the entire extent of the tooth 
before we dare put in practice means capable of stopping its ravages. 
Under those circumstances, extirpation is the only remedial means 
at the disposal of the surgeon. 
In veterinary surgery we have very powerful means of practis- 
ing the extraction of the molar teeth ; the key of Garengeot, con- 
structed on a grand scale by Delafond, & c. ; the peculiar instru- 
ment invented by M. Plasse, and Professor Simonds’ elegantly 
constructed lever-forceps, are, most assuredly, instruments whose 
force and power of action are well proportioned to the energetic 
resistance against which they must be applied : and in a great 
number of cases they will be found to be of much assistance in the 
hands of the veterinary surgeon, and fulfil perfectly the objects for 
which they have been recommended. 
For a description of these instruments, and the indications as to 
their employ, we would refer the reader to the Memoirs on the 
subject by Messrs. Delafond and Plasse, published in the “ Recueil 
de Medecine Veterinaire,” vol. viii, page 182, and vol. ix, p. 317, 
and to the observations of Professor Simonds, made in the Veteri- 
nary Medical Association and published in The VETERINARIAN. 
The transcription of these Memoirs, of which we most willingly 
adopt all the conclusions, would not, we conceive, be of any utility 
in this place, and we shall therefore proceed. 
We will direct attention to cases in which the employment 
of those instruments is rendered quite impossible, either by the 
diseased tooth being situated far back in the depth of the mouth ; 
by the small rise that it makes without the alveole, or on account 
of its enormous resistance to the efforts made for its extraction ; 
cases in all which it is necessary, in order to extirpate the organ, 
to have recourse to other modes of operating. 
Instances, in fact, present themselves, in which the carious tooth 
can neither be seized by the hooks of the key nor the fangs of the 
forceps no more than by the screw-mouth of Plasse’s apparatus. 
When, for example, the last molars, either above or below, are 
