Periscope of Medical and General Science in their Relations to Dentistry. [Volume: 2, Issue: 6, January, 1861, pp. 345-355]

PERISCOPE OF MEDICAL AND GENERAL SCIENCE.

345

PERISCOPE OF MEDICAL AND GENERAL SCIENCE IN THEIR
RELATIONS TO DENTISTRY.
BY GEO. J ZIEGLER, M.D
"Lecture on Dentition and its Derangements. By A. JACOBI, M.D.,
Professor of Infantile Pathology and Therapeutics in the New York
Medical College. —To a truly scientific plysician, nothing is more
evident than that the physiology and pathology of the human organism have not been sufficiently elucidated. The medical sciences
are by no means completely developed; they never will be, for they
combine a knowledge of all the varied and intimate physiological functions and obscure pathological changes of the physical and mental organs
of the human frame; they never can be, for their basis, the human organism, will and must undergo changes and further development. Those
powerful minds who have done most, and are still in our times working
most successfully for the advancement of medical knowledge, have been
and are still the first to admit the truth of this proposition, and are the
first, also, to acknowledge that more remains to be done than has been
done hitherto. Fortunately, however, there are a large number of subjects so well known and so clearly understood, that even in this everchanging science we are enabled to point out the way to further investigations, to arrange in mathematical order our conclusions, and win thereby
for medical science not only a place among the so-called exact sciences,
but the acknowledgment of educated men, that it is the noblest and most
comprehensive among them.
"Having the honor, as I believe, of being the first in this country to
teach infantile pathology as a distinct and fully independent branch of
medical education, I did not deem it proper to begin with a subject liable
to be misunderstood, mistaken, or misconstrued. A subject of this description I have therefore determined, in this preliminary course, to consider at length, viz., the physio'ogy and patho'ory o' de ititioa-a su!)jtc;
which is but imperfectly understood. But there should be nothing mysterious about it; the process of the early formation and the final development of teeth is well understood, and on this safe basis we are able to
rest our conclusions relating to pathology and therapeutics. S) little,
however, can we rely on the correct interpretation of facts by observers,
that even here we shall have to contend with prejudice and ignorance.
"You know that among the public at large, even among the educated
part of the community, teething is regarded as one of the two scapegoats
of all the diseases of infantile age. Teething and worms are among
mothers acknowledged as the universal and all-powerful sources of disease.
Whenever an innocent ascaris or a puny oxyuris is observed in the faeces
of a child, worms are, for years to come, considered as the undoubted
cause of any disease that may occur. Teething, a normal, physiological
development, taking place at an age which for many reasons is subject to
a large number of diseases, has a strong hold on the imagination of frightened maternal minds. The first dentition generally occupies the first two
years of early infantile life; a period in which the child is peculiarly liable
to diseases both numerous and frequently of a dangerous character. As
the protrusion of a tooth (and in the average a tooth will cut every month)
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