Treatise on dental caries - 1878 Author:Émile Magitot Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: seems to undergo a sort of gradual hypertrophy which, concurring with many other causes, finally results in the natural loss of the dental organ. (6.) ANATOMI... more »C LESIONS OF DENTAL CAKIES. (See the two plates at the end of the volume.) Having glanced at the normal characteristics of the dental organ, we shall, in the study of the anatomic lesions of caries, and in order to proceed methodically in this investigation, consider this malady by divers stages, equally distinct in their characters, their symptoms, and the method of treatment applicable to them. In this artificial division, which we shall maintain throughout this work, and which seems to us eminently favorable to our description, we admit three successive periods: — First period. Superficial caries: caries of the enamel. Second period. Middle caries: attacking the ivory after having perforated the layer of enamel. Third period. Deep or penetrating caries : that which, having reached the cavity of the pulp, has exposed the organ it incloses. § 1. First Period. Superficial Caries: Caries of the ISnamel. This caries takes on several forms. When it begins upon a smooth portion of the crown of a tooth, as in very many cases of alteration under the influence of an active and general cause, it appears as a whitish, opaque point, and the enamel has there lost its glassy and transparent look. If at this point an instrument is applied, the tissue of the enamel is found to be friable and chalky, and can be scratched away over a space variable in extent and depth, rapidly finding its way to the surface of the ivory. If the alteration, in place of originating upon a smooth portion of the exterior surface of the enamel, begins in a break in its continuity, or in a furrow previously existing in the crown, it pres...« less