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others are searched to the remotest nerve and sickened to the very soul by a sixth part of that quantity . Ou that extensively interesting subject , the tooth-ache , the author is tolerably diffuse . We may talk , when in health , of
the intense sufferings of the mind , and with sufficient reason perhaps ; but intense physical pain , while it lasts , is the worst suffering in nature . The mind can re act upon itself ; passion may find relief in other passions ; we can take a pride in the cause of our calamity , and in our fortitude to endure it ; but when we are in bodily agony , the only tiling we think of is how to get rid of it . When we have an excruciating" tooth-ache , it seems the most cruel of human pains . When we have an intense heart-burn , it is the same . What can be worse than the worst possible degree of ear-ache ? In short , any bodily pain at its extreme , is really the cruellest of human pains , because it soon ceases to confine the exercise of its prerogative according to local nomenclature , and , expanding over the system , subjugates the whole man to its accursed influence . If , however , one pain be worse than another , we should say it was the tooth-ache , chiefly because it is the most common , but partly because it almost always includes head-ache and ear-ache . " The pain frequently comes on suddenly , is lancinating and acute , and darts through the head in the direction of the temple or the ear . During the paroxysm , the patient is almost distracted with the intensity of the pain , and tosses his head about from side to side ,
prepared to submit to any remedy that promises alleviation of his torments . At other times it is more obtuse , and what is termed " a gnawing pain , " which being unceasing , renders the sufferer extremely miserable , and deprives him equally of rest . " The predisposing causes of this complaint , as assigned by medical writers , are very numerous , and comprehend caries , scurvy , catarrh , gout , rheumatism , the hysterical disease , dyspepsia , and pregnancy . The proximate cause , when the disease is not purely sympathetic , is an inflammation of the vascular membrane which lines the cavity of the
tooth , or of the vessels which enter at the extremity of the fang . " It is well known , ' that inflammatory action usually produces a swelling of the part affected , and that the pain diminishes as the swelling increases . In this case , however , the membrane which is the sent of inflammation , being confined within a bony cavity , but little swelling
can take place , and hence the pain becomes almost insupportable . The same must happen when the vessels are inflamed , since they are pinched and confined by the smallness of the orifice . The inflammation may possibly , never be so limited as not to atFect both the vessels and the membranes simultaneously .
" When a carious tooth is the seat of this disorder , it is either produced by those constitutional or internal causes which gave rise to the caries itself , or else it is a consequence of some incidental circumstance , as exposure to a current of air , eating or diinking something very cold or very hot , or touching the irritable membrane in mastication . When
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Dental Surgery . 283
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1836, page 283, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2657/page/19/
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