Tooth

“ On the under surface of this oblique tooth band (still taking the lower jaw) , and close to its edge, appear ten thickenings, below each of which the mesoderm rises up into a “ dental papilla, " and so moulds the thickening into a cap for itself-the “ enamel organ.” ”

“ Tooth-achs are of two kinds;—It may either proceed from cold, or from a decayed tooth, or from both. If the tooth is decayed, the sooner you have it out the better; but if your tooth is sound, then it is as unreasonable to draw it, as it would be to sling you over board, because you feel the pain. ”

“ As the tooth wears, the surface, besides the external enamel layer as in an ordinary, simple tooth, shows in addition a second inner ring of the same hard substance surrounding the pit, which, of course, adds greatly to the efficiency of the tooth as an organ for biting tough, fibrous substances. ”

“ For that matter, teeth, as is well known, can be extracted, cleaned and put back again, or teeth from one persons mouth can be put into the place of an extracted tooth in another's mouth and become firmly imbedded and do good service for years. The part of the jaw-bone that embraces the roots of the teeth is called the alveolar process, and it continues to grow and harden for some time after the teeth have been erupted, or after they have changed their places in the jaw. ”

“ A tooth consists of an inner soft pulp (in old teeth the pulp may become converted into bone-like material) surrounded by hard white dentine or ivory, which is covered by a thin layer of enamel, the hardest tissue known in the animal body. A hard cement sometimes covers as a thin layer the outer surface of the root, and may also cover the enamel of the crown. ”

“ Each tooth is divided into the crown, body, and root. The crown is the grinding surface; the body, the part projecting from the jaw, is the seat of sensation and nutrition; the root is that portion of the tooth which is inserted in the alveolus. ”

“ Then, if it be the upper gum that requires lancing, you ought to go to the head of the child, looking over, as it were, and into his mouth, and should steady the gum with the index finger of your left hand; then you should take hold of the gum-lancet with your right hand—holding it as if it were a table-knife at dinner—and cut firmly along the inflamed and swollen gum and down to the tooth, 61until the edge of the gum-lancet grates on the tooth. Each incision ought to extend along the ridge of the gum to about the extent of each expected tooth. ”

“ Finally, if the patient can no longer bear the pain, the tooth is extracted and in this the suffering person has two choices. One method is to knock the tooth out. One end of a piece of bone or hard wood is placed against the base of the tooth and an obliging neighbor taps the other end sharply with a stone axe. ”

“ A gentleman, a physician, aged thirty-two years, strong and vigorous, with no lack of nerve-energy, calls to have his teeth attended to, with the disease in the first stage throughout the mouth. Upon examination, he observes upon the gum of one of the lower cuspids a dark purplish ring encircling the neck, from one-sixty-fourth to one sixteenth of an inch in depth; the tooth in situ is white and clean. With the aid of the mouth and hand mirror he shows the condition to the patient, and, taking up an excavator, endeavors to pass it down between the tooth and gum, on the labial surface. ”

“ When the pain is situated in the root of the tooth or in its nerve, it is necessary, says the author, to distinguish whether it is caused by an accumulation of morbid matter, or whether it is, instead, a simple pain without matter. ”

“ There are some times more than six thousand of these teeth, and although they are so small that they cannot be seen without the aid of a powerful microscope, they are nevertheless very formidable. For every tooth is hooked, with the points of the hook directed toward the throat. ”

“ All their teeth are yellow. No tooth-brush ever entered that convent. Brushing one’s teeth is at the top of a ladder at whose bottom is the loss of one’s soul. ”

“ Side view of a tooth nearly arrived at maturity. The dotted lines mark the compressed conical cavity, containing Pulp, within the Root of the growing tooth. Scale two thirds. (Buckland.)
⁠Fig. 3. Tranverse section of Fig. 1'. showing the thickness of the largest tooth (a.) and its root set deep and firmly in the bony socket, which descends nearly to the bottom of the Jaw. Scales two thirds. ”

“ This hollow centre may be seen occasionally filled up by a sharp conical tooth like the phragmocone of a belemnite.
The lower portion of the tooth exhibits a much more complicated texture. Externally it is marked by deep longitudinal furrows, that run down the enamelled sides and sink into the jaw. When cut across at this ribbed part, the tooth is found to present the most complex and graceful internal structure. ”

“ The hard parts of teeth are principally made up of dentine, or ivory, and a very hard substance called enamel. These are variously combined in different animals. Each tooth consist of three parts, a crown, or body, projecting above the gum, one or more fangs imbedded in the jaw, and the neck, or intermediate part. In some animals one or more of the teeth are modified into tusks which project from the mouth, as in both sexes of the elephant and of the walrus, and in the male narwhal. ”

“ The teeth.—Imperfect use of the teeth leads to many ills. When adequately exercised and made to execute for one or two hours every day a lively dance in their sockets, during which the circulation of blood and lymph in the tooth-pulp, periodontal membrane, and surrounding tissue of the gum is vigorously stimulated, and the cavity of the mouth is bathed in a copious flow of salivary and other buccal secretions, we have conditions which make alike for the health of the buccal mucous membrane, of the teeth, and of the periodontal membrane and alveoli ”

“ It is a not unfamiliar experience for a man to go to a dentist, get into a chair and point to a toothache in the upper right or northeast corner of his mouth and have the dentist tell him that the toothache he thinks he is having there is really in the root of a tooth in the right lower or southwest corner. ”

“ In adult man there are thirty-two teeth, composed largely of dentine, but the crowns are covered with enamel, and the fangs with a layer of bone called cementum. Of the eight teeth on each half of each jaw, the two in front are incisors, then come one canine, cuspid, or dog tooth, two bicuspids, or false molars, and three molars, or grinding teeth. ”

“ Furthermore, those little teeth, which are constantly rubbing against each other, would be very soon worn out, if, like our own, they were made once for all; accordingly their germ, or pulp, to use the proper term, instead of perishing, as with us, when the tooth has once come, retains its life, and works on throughout the life of the animal. ”

“ Teeth are organised, that is, they possess nerves, arteries, veins, and absorbents, or are endowed with those vessels needed to resist decay, and to promote nutrition. That a tooth possesses nerves, no one who has submitted to have these members filed by the dentist, or who has endured the tooth-ache, can for an instant doubt; and that they are even, in some degree, susceptible of external impressions, the sensation produced by certain acids seems to render probable. The growth they exhibit shows they are gifted with arteries and veins ”

“ They are flanked at each angle of the mouth by a human tooth. After the teeth have been inserted into the wood, the bark cloth has been applied, and is turned in at the roots of the teeth, so as to represent the gums. The eyes are simply oval pieces of mother-of-pearl. ”

“ The shortening of the jaw is still proceeding, and, although in lower races of man the last molar or wisdom tooth is almost as large as the molars in front of it, in the higher races the wisdom tooth is much smaller and frequently does not develop at all, or begins to decay very soon after its appearance. ”

“ Whenever this enamel is worn through by too coarse a powder, or too frequently cleaning the teeth, or eaten through by a scorbutic humor in the gums, the tooth cannot remain long sound, any more than a filbert-kernel can, when it has been penetrated by a worm. ”

“ The tubules of the dentine lodge excessively fine fibrillæ of the nerve and that is why the cutting into a live tooth is so painful an operation. (2) The enamel, which is the hardest of all animal tissues, has a polished and shining appearance and is arranged in a mosaic of microscopic prisms, closely packed together, which in most mammals are solid, but in the marsupials, with some exceptions, are tubular. ”

“ Sometimes, you may remember, instead of the infected tooth in the upper jaw, let us say, being the one that hurts, it is the tooth directly below it in the lower jaw that seems to be causing the pain. ”

“ If, owing to the chucking of a horse’s head, or to a fall, or to other accident, a tooth gets knocked out of the head of a youth of ten or twenty years, if the tooth be at once replaced in its socket and bound to the teeth on each side of it, it will certainly take root again, though it will remain somewhat weaker than its neighbours ”

“ There is, moreover, a greater roughening of the outer surface of the enamel, which on the worn disk produces a faint crimping not generally observed in northern specimens; otherwise the tooth is un distinguishable from the same molar of the mammoth.
3. Two fragments of germ molars:—
a. A fragment of an upper tooth, holding 8–9 posterior ridges, including a broad, flat, digitated talon. The plates are of precisely the same character as in the preceding tooth, but longer and broader. ”

“ The enamel, thick on the top of the crown, grows thinner towards the root, an arrangement required by its use, which is to defend the tooth, to support principally the efforts of mastication, which are made especially upon the top of the crown. ”

“ In general, the shorter the tooth, so much the longer is its root. A straight tooth commonly has a straight root, a curved tooth has it generally curved. The root of a temporary tooth produces in children a new tooth, which usually pushes out the first ”

“ When the roots are perfected, the length of the tooth is completed, and the only after process consists in a gradual deposition of earthy matter, within the body of the member, the bulk of which is defined. ”

“ To draw a tooth without pain, fill an earthen crucible full of Emmets, Ants, or Pismires, eggs and all, and when you have burned them, keep the ashes, with which if you touch a tooth it will fall out. ”

“ At the age of ten years a spot appears in the outer upper incisors, at fifteen years the groove has worn to the center of the tooth, and at twenty-one years the groove is worn to the bottom of the tooth. ”

“ It is not true, that the teeth must fit into the jaws; the reverse is true, the jaws form themselves around the teeth. The bone grows around the roots of the teeth and forms a socket like the mortar or cement around the bricks in a fire-place. This is easily demonstrated; a tooth, for example, can be completely turned round or moved from one place to another, and, as we say, it grows "fast." ”

“ The hinder end of each stylet or tooth is 481supported by a second chitinous tooth-bearer, [375] and the movement of each is controlled by three muscles, one of which, running forwards to the mouth, helps to protrude the tooth, whilst the other two running upwards and downwards to the sheath of the pharynx, direct in what plane the tooth shall be moved. ”

“ The second peculiarity is, that this constant loss of substance at the free end of the tooth is constantly repaired by new growth at the opposite extremity. The tooth grows during the life of the animal ”

“ Implements of Tooth.
Only one object made of tooth was found, viz., 1-8736, fig. 36, in stratum V. It is a bear’s tooth perforated at the root, serving the purpose of ornament or amulet, and corresponds exactly to the typical illustration of the one from New Jersey; [152] here Abbott emphasizes the fact that such ornaments were the most common among the earlier and present-day Indians.
Figs. 34 and 35. × 1/2. Fragments of bones. Fig. 36. × 1/2. A bear-tooth ornament.
C. Implements Made of Shells. ”

“ When the teeth are carious he directs us to scrape them, and [295] apply to them a mixture of the flowers of roses, galls, and myrrh, and to hold undiluted wine in the mouth. When the teeth are slackened by any accident, he directs us to fasten them to the surrounding ones with a golden thread, and then to hold some stringent decoction in the mouth. When in young persons a second tooth appears before the first has fallen out, he recommends us to scarify around the latter and pull it out, and to endeavour to force the other gradually into its proper place. ”

“ The first tooth cast by the child should be swallowed by the mother to ensure a new growth of teeth. Buttoning the coat awry, or drawing on stockings inside out, causes matters to go wrong during the day. ”

“ It is, however, impossible to examine the molar teeth satisfactorily during life. Far less frequently an incisor tooth becomes loosened; more often it loses its glistening appearance and looks dull and yellowish. ”

“ In recording the teeth of any particular mammal it saves time and space if a dental formula be used. This simply means setting down the number of each kind of tooth in one side of the upper and lower jaw in their order from before backward. Thus man's formula 2 . 1 2 -would
be, incisors? ”

“ When teeth are drawn, young people here think nothing of the pain, but often speak with pride of the resistance of their teeth—“he scarce could stir’n,” or “he had a proper job to get’n.” In a letter to my father, 20 January 1860, my grandfather says—“I saw a man spitting out blood, and asked him the matter, when he said he had had a tooth drawn, and the doctor had torn the jaw.... I gave him brandy on lint, which soon stopped the flow of blood.... ”