and then asked me to see their patients; and when I asked them for the remedy or the remedies, or the instruments to show them how to manipulate, and how to use the remedies, they did not have them! Now, how can gentlemen expect to accomplish anything unless they themselves will faithfully try to be honest. It is no just criticism upon a method of treatment proposed, when the critic himself does not practice or attempt to practice that which is advocated, and which he condemns.

Dr. E. PARMLY BROWN: There seem to be two grounds taken by the gentlemen in this discussion. One is, that pyorrhoea alveolaris cannot be cured; the other, that it can be cured. Who would think of condemning a physician, who has been treating a case of chronic sore throat, because the sore throat re-appeared in a year or two? What dentist would blame another for having once, to all appearances, cured a case of pyorrhoea alveolaris, because the disease had recurred in three or four years? It takes several generations to cure and eradicate this disease. It is in the blood,-"in the family." The child says, "My mother's teeth all dropped out. My sister's teeth commenced to drop out. I have been coming to a dentist since I was a child for this particular disease." Dr. Harlan is right. He has cured some cases. So have you; so have I; but can any of you tell what condition those cases will be in five years from now, or sooner? Many of them will require further treatment. Does a man let his wooden house burn down because it has caught fire two or three times before, while his neighbor's brick house never gets on fire? No, sir. He takes a pail of water and puts the fire out when it starts again, if he can. We must do the same with pyorrhoea alveolaris.

Dr. SHEPARD: From my observation of this disease, I think it is possible to wipe it out in the first generation. Whatever constitutional tendencies there may be, I think it is entirely within the province of the dentist to prevent it, in every individual case, from occurring in the descendants of those who have suffered from it. It is curable to the extent that any disease is curable. It can be so far kept down that its ravages shall not work destruction to the tissue. By taking it in the early stages, there will be no loss of the alveolar process, no inflammation of the tissues, and such a degree of health can be assured that the teeth shall be firm, and continue firm through a long life. In families where the father and mother have both been sufferers and the children have come under my care at the proper age,-when children in educated families do come into

the dentist's hands,-I have found this to be the case. The hope of the future for our patients lies, it seems to me, in our belief in this truth, and in our spreading it among our patients to such an extent that they will bring the children to us for care and treatment early in life. As Dr. Peirce said, it is only tendencies which are hereditary. Those tendencies we need to watch for, and when we combat them at an early age, there is no injury to the patient.

There is one other criticism which it seems to me should be made upon the discussion, so far. That is, that the terms have been very loosely used; so loosely, that it would seem as though some of the gentlemen who have spoken did not understand what they were talking about. I do not think that is probably true; but it is true that terms have been used very loosely. The term pyorrhoea, as is probably known to a majority of those present, is merely a name for one of the symptoms which are visible; the meaning of the word being simply "pus-flowing." This refers to only one manifestation of this disease, either that there is pus flowing from under the edge of the gum, or that it can be forced out by pressure. Of course, using the term as we do, we make it express other symptoms and conditions, the loss of the soft and hard tissues, the inflammation which is present. It seems to me we should keep as closely as possible to an exact definition and use of terms. There is no name, among the many which have been suggested, which exactly expresses this disease. Many have been seeking for a name which should include more of the symptoms. I have felt for years that it was a legiti mate office of this body to introduce terms, and insist on the accurate use of them in these discussions. The Section on Nomenclature already exists, but it has, in my opinion, almost entirely ignored its legitimate meaning and design.

Dr. ATKINSON: Let us get our minds back to what disease is and how it comes, and whether it is capable of being limited or annihilated; whether, indeed, it is or is not self-limiting. There is such a thing as antidoting a diseased activity which is the result of the introduction of a foreign element into a functioning body. One gentleman very wisely said that it had become an aphorism in pathology, as it had in physics, that if you remove the cause, the effect ceases. Every phlegmonous abscess is self-limiting and self-curing, if you do not interfere with it. There are two modes of its limiting and two modes of its cure. One mode of limitation is by spontaneity of the functioning power in a body, where the production of the diseased activity goes in the direction of the least resistance;

hence, if you have the beginning of a pustule, boil, or phlegmonous abscess near a bone, it will go toward the soft tissue, by reason of the greater resistance of the denser tissue, until ripened. If you press upon that, so as to prevent influx of the pabulum that is wept out from the capillaries, you will abort your boil. Nature sometimes does that by the surprising of the nutrient current by the reception of good or bad news. You will say that is going into figment and fancy! but we live by figments and fancy. It is the first impression that sets the deflection up which results in that which is called disSo the same forces may kill or cure, or they may poison or

ease. heal. Every alveolar abscess would be cured by spontaneity if there were no foreign element there, just the same as a boil in the soft parts, when it bursts, and the core, as they say, comes out, heals spontaneously. Why do not these cases of pyorrhoea alveolaris heal? Why do not what used to be called fever sores heal? Simply because of the introduction of micro-organisms floating in the air, which set up a ferment that is adverse to such healing, so that the tissues cannot be rebuilt at that locality, and you get a succession of discharges. I have cured abscess of twenty-four years' standing, on a superior central incisor, in eight days, by simply removing the fistulous tract, and injecting with a compound of creasote and oil of cloves, equal parts. It is folly to talk about its recurrence. A recurrence of disease in such a case is the recurrence of incompetency on the part of the investigator, or else the recurrence of malevolence, in the having of a bad habit, to persist in a wrong position, knowing it to be wrong. These cases that have been spoken of as a recurrence of the disease, if they were a recurrence in the true sense, were simply outbreaks in a territory that had only been half cured, little tracts having been left in which bacteria could lodge and find oxygen enough to keep them alive, to break the tissue down again. Now, by the recuperative law of nature, there must be a making of its way to the surface, a discharge of this broken-down tissue from the system, or, taking the other course, its encystment. What is encystment? It is the inclosing of a body that has no affinity for the tissues, or even compatibility with the tissues, by a substance so indifferent in its movements of nutrient activity that it makes a pellicle which is nearly a mineral. When that is made a mineral, the next to it will be of a vegetative character, and the next outside of that will be the lowest form of animal functioning. Thus when you get a ball or any other foreign substance encysted

in the tissues, it may remain there for years. I have in my own person a splinter of wood that is now so nearly absorbed that I can hardly find it, except when the tissues are a little lax from a debilitated condition of the body. The point to which I wish to draw your attention is that where you have a body that is inimical to the organization, the organization will make an effort toward self-cure. It is not the medicine that cures. In the physical economy we find a poison or a remedy in the same force. We must get rid of this idea of specificity of activity, and get back to an understanding of the divine radiancy that makes planets and the inhabitants of planets; that it is that divine energy which we call solar influence that does this work. But to this solar influence, this universal force, you must add a plus—that is, the unseen element. This great energy whose first expression is light-this and plus work all things operated on this planet. Each individual human system is a solar system with all its planets. That they say is away in the clouds, and so it is. But each one of the elements of the tissues must have its little share of divine radiancy, to the measure of its demand. When it has that there is a wholesome condition. When it is offered more than its demand, it will not take it. When it gets less, it sets up a howl and asks its neighbors to help. When they contribute of their little, they decay, and here is the point of entrance of the mischief, of the unkindly movement which is entirely beyond the perception of any eye, yet illumined to the understanding mind. When we shall have understood that there is a limitation to the possible life by nutrition of any of the elements of the tissues, we may see that there are times when they come of age, and go out by a sort of senility-that is, a rejuvenescence, by passing into another mode of expression. That is what we want to take hold of in these very conditions, where we need to have something to annihilate the bacteria in all ulcerated-suppurating surfaces.

I told you last night a number of remedies. Another is a saturated solution of salicylic acid in alcohol, which coagulates the coagulable part of the tissues so beautifully as to make a dressing of its own, allowing a building-up, a reproduction of tissues, taking the same steps that were taken in the building-up of the original struc

tures.

The teeth are a very favorable territory in which to study all the laws of organization. For instance, in the enamel we have an analogue of the mineral kingdom. In the dentine we have an analogue of the vegetable kingdom. In the pulp we have the veritable ani

mal kingdom, operating under the law of radiancy according to the type to build it up. The enamel is built once for all. The dentine is built once for all, in the primary dentine, but the secondary dentine is, under healthy conditions, continued until the pulp itself is obliterated. As in the ruminants, all those creatures that feed upon grass, the grazing animals, which are subject to a wearing away of the incisors, we have the successive steps involving calcification, consolidation, and dentinification, carried on to the very end of life, as we can see in examining the teeth of old cattle. When we understand these laws, as expressed in organisms, high and low, when we are impelled by a desire for the benefit and advancement of others, we will then, indeed, become the divine healers, to be which we all aspire.

The exanthemata and all specific diseases are self-limiting. In a perfectly vigorous organism none of them would take root or hold. So that even in those diseases which we call specific, scarlatina, small-pox, and all the exanthemata, there can only be a taking hold where nutrition is somewhere unsatisfied. It is well known that there are some persons who cannot be inoculated so as to transfer vaccine virus, so as to set up that retrogressive metamorphosis which must exist in such cases, and which leaves the unsightly mark so familiar to us all.