The anesthesia lasted for nearly thirty minutes. I used it in one case before lancing the gum overlapping a 'lower wisdom tooth and have extracted a number of teeth with it with very satisfactory results. The objection to its use is the slow solubility, which necessitates the keeping of a solution, while in the use of any local anesthetic it is always best to use a fresh solution.

It is claimed to be very effective in obtunding sensitive dentin, when used as an alcoholic or etherial solution. While I have never tried it for this purpose, it seems quite plausible. Then two, owing to its great solubility in alcohol and ether, it suggests itself as an effective agent in pressure anesthesia.-Indiana Dental Journal.

THE LEGITIMATE USE OF GOLD CROWNS.

BY THOMAS A. BLACK, B. SC.

I think it will be agreed amongst all dentists who are not actuated only by the fee that can be obtained in the least time possible, but have the true interests of the profession at heart, that there is considerable abuse in the matter of gold crowns, though I am glad to blieve that only a minority of practitioners are responsible for it. To see the continuity of a handsome set of teeth broken by the insertion of a gold crown anywhere between the second bicuspids, especially in the upper jaw, when such crown is not an abutment for bridge-work (in which latter case it may be excusable), is unjustifiable, and is an offense against good taste. But over and over again the dental operator finds one of these anterior teeth carrying a gold crown when the tooth on either side is present.

It is true the patient has often demanded its insertion, saying a gold crown is "pretty" but the best taste is certainly against the practice. Nature never caused a gold crown to grow and never will and the true method of procedure in such cases is generally the restoration of the tooth by filling or the placing of a porcelain crown, preferably a Richmond, or shell crown with porcelain facing a Logan, I consider ,not being a good crown from a mechanical point of view. Many operators claim to be experts

in placing Logan crowns-and they are welcome to the distinction. They insert them cheaper than a Richmond; but if these operators would carefully explain to their patients the undoubted advantages of the latter, and that all "pivot teeth" are not the same, it would be both to their own and their patient's advantage. Many dentists never educate their patients to an appreciation of the fact that dentistry offers scope to the man of great intellectuality and keenest judgment-he has not necessarily to go to the practice of medicine or law for the exercise of his talents-but accept the patients' verdicts, do as they wish, no matter how great a departure from good practice, it may be, being satisfied to obtain their fees. Like other professions, there is a commercial aspect in dentistry, for the dentist must live-but dentistry cannot be pursued to its highest and best by the man whose commercial spirit is satisfied to do what his patient asks, no matter what, as long as he is paid. It is this spirit which has predominated in large measure in the placing of gold crowns upon the anterior teeth, when the teeth on either side remain. And this spirit is not always so advantageous as the dentist thinks, for the patient often tires of the gold crown, consults another practitioner, who says the best art in all cases is to imitate nature so closely as to hide art, and not to put on a gold crown in a conspicuous part of the mouth like a signboard proclaiming. "This tooth is false!" who points out, no matter how good and beautiful the other teeth are, no praise is bestowed on them, for the observer's attention is caught and held by that gold crown alone. The patient is delighted a little later on, after having the gold replaced by porcelain, to hear that "so and so" was remarking upon her beautiful teeth! This substitution is true art. In this country people have got used to the conspicuous gold crown, but this only makes the appearance of an unbroken set of teeth all the more remarkable.

With regard to crowning molar teeth, this is also too commonly resorted to. Many teeth indiscriminately crowned could have been restored to a state of usefulness by judicious contour fillings; and it is much better practice to allow the saliva and fiuids to wash around the natural tooth than around a foreign such such as a gold crown.

It takes education, culture and years of training to properly. appreciate these things: and the man who has that education, culture and training, gained at the cost of much time and money, is the man who demands and justifiably expects that he be paid for his advice, for his judgment and æsthetic ideas and his skill, as

well as the lawyer and the physician. Good work is always worth paying for in fact, work, whether it be dental art or anythnig else in any line whatsoever, cannot be both good and cheap.

But I am not denying the use of the gold crown-far from it! I recognize its distinct place in dentistry, as an abutment for bridgework, and for restoring teeth very badly decayed, but not for use when skillful filling would do all that is necessary. I believe the gold crown to be one of the grandest inventions in modern dentistry, but its legitimate use is not always seen, and is mostly (when not used as an abutment) in connection with those teeth which would otherwise soon reach that stage when it would be necessary to consign them to the forceps.

ADDRESS ON HORACE WELLS, DELIVERED BEFORE THE CHICAGO COLLEGE OF DENTAL SURGERY.

BY DR. JAMES M'MANUS.

Less than fifty-seven years ago the medical profession was mastered by suffering and pain, and there was no hopeful outlook for its prevention. The French surgeon Velpeau, in his work on surgery, published about 1832, made this doleful statement: "To avoid pain under incision is a chimera which is no longer pursued by any one; a cutting instrument and pain in operative surgery are two words which never present themselves separately to the mind of the patient, and of which he must of necessity admit the inevitable association." The authority of such a distinguished teacher almost banished hope, and the surgeons of that period only dared to attempt a limited class of operations. Velpeau lived long enough to learn that prayers are often answered and that the hopeful, earnest seeker for light and means to aid the suffering, and to relieve pain, may reasonabl hope for illumination and help.

Sulphuric ether was known as early as the thirteenth century. Nitrous oxide gas was discovered by Priestly and Scheele previous to 1800, and Sir Humphrey Davy, after some years of study and experimentation in an exhaustive work, published in 1800, entitled

"Researches on Nitrous Oxide Gas," on one of the last pages casually throws out the suggestion "that as nitrous oxide gas appears capable of destroying pain, it may probably be used to advantage during surgical operations." The suggestion fell on barren ground. The public knew of nitrous oxide only as an exhilarating gas, and chemical professors made with it an amusing feature at popular lectures. For forty-four years the onlookers and lecturers could not see the great blessing that laughing gas was offering to them, and tempting some one among them to lift it to a nobler use. Among the audience at a chemical lecture given in Hartford, December 10, 1844, was a young dentist, twenty-nine years old, Horace Wells. He went there to see, hear and learn; he inhaled the gas and also watched carefully its effect on others. The exciting incident of the evening was when Mr. Samuel A. Cooley, under its influence, fell, striking his legs against the wooden settees. After the effects of the gas had passed, Dr. Wells asked him if he was not hurt, and he said he did not know it at the time, but on looking at his legs found them bleeding from the injuries he had received. Dr. Wells, turning to a friend, said: "I believe a man by taking that gas could have a tooth extracted or a limb amputated and not feel any pain."

After the lecture Dr. Wells asked Prof. Colton whether one could not inhale the gas and have a tooth extracted without feeling pain, and he replied, he had not given the subject any thought; that he had been giving the gas for over a year and such an idea had not occurred to him. Dr. Wells then made an appointment for the next day, and Prof. Colton brought a bag of the gas to his office. There were present, Prof. Colton, Dr. Riggs, Mr. Colton and Mr. Cooley, the performer at the entertainment the night previous. Dr. Wells deliberately took the bag in his hands and inhaled the gas until he was insensible, when Dr. Riggs extracted an upper wisdom tooth. On recovering from the effects of the gas he exclaimed, “I did not feel it so much as the prick of a pin; a new era in tooth pulling, the greatest discovery ever made." The hope and belief that Dr. Wells held for several years previously, that a means would be discovered by which surgical operations might be performed without suffering or pain, was demonstrated December 11, 1844, when he submitted to the first surgical operation performed under the influence of nitrous oxide gas. He then and there proclaimed the greatest discovery ever given to the world, the "mastery of pain," that laughing gas was indeed a blessing to humanity and the fore-runner of all other anesthetics.

Hartford was a small inland town, with no hospitals or surgeons of great reputation to aid him in giving publicity to his discovery. A few weeks later, in January, 1845, Dr. Wells decided to go to Boston. His selection of Boston to make his discovery known was probably owing to the fact that he had an office there early 1844 in partnership with a former student, Dr. W. T. G. Morton. He unfortunately selected the one city in the country the least likely to accept ideas from any one outside the regular medical profession. He obtained permission to address the class of the elder Dr. Warren in the Medical College, and later gave the gas to a boy and extracted a tooth. The boy made an outery, but said on recovering that he did not know when the tooth was drawn. Some of the students hissed and Dr. Wells was not allowed another trial, but was denounced as a humbug.

Nearly two years later the former student and partner of Dr. Wells, Dr. W. T. G. Morton, extracted a tooth for a boy while he was under the influence of a compound which he claimed to have discovered, and on October 16, 1846, he made his first experiment with it, at the hospital, in a surgical case. Boston surgeons were then convinced that an agent had been discovered that would render one insensible to pain, but they were not told what the compound was. They were so jubilant over it that Dr. Holmes wrote to Dr. Morton "that everybody wants a hand in a great invention," and as contribution from his fertile brain medical nomenclature was enriched with the words anesthesia, and anesthetics.

Eleven days later Drs. Morton and Jackson made oath to the joint discovery of a compound for the prevention of pain during surgical operations, and applied for a patent, which was granted November 12, 1846. November 9th, Dr. Morton declared it was simply sulphuric ether and not a compound as claimed in his application for a patent. In 1847, Drs. Morton and Jackson each claimed to be the sole independent discoverer of anesthesia, and they fought each other along that line to the bitter end.

Chloroform was known as early as 1831, but it was not known that it had anesthetic properties until Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, Scotland, made the discovery in 1847. Chloroform then supplanted sulphuric ether as ether had for a time nitrous oxide gas.

Ancient history tells us that there were compounds that would render one more or less insensible to pain, but they were evidently abandoned. When Velpeau wrote in 1842 "to avoid pain is a chimera no longer pursued by any one," it is not improbable that many did pursue a chimera, for Dr. Crawford W. Long, of Geor