even for this short period of its existence, I do not feel happy; too many fallacies and false teachings pass in review. When I call to mind that in this country, and all over the world, the medical profession has been constantly changing its modes of practice,— now accepting, now discarding, some dogma; its whole march of progress marked with the most serious blunders and mistakes,— so much so that Professor Nathan E. Smith, in a public lecture in Baltimore, in discussing the question whether medicine had done more good or more harm in the world, said that he could not answer the question; surely a gentleman well posted as to the shortcomings of his own profession would hesitate to throw stones at the glass houses of other people, or to criticise in any captious spirit a young and growing specialty, or exhibit any great willingness to remove the mote from a brother's eye.

Br. L. D. Shepard. The only good, it seems to me, which can come of such discussions is that we are thereby more fully aroused to the importance of always doing thorough work, and that the best views of those who confessedly do the best work are distributed more extensively throughout the profession. While these attacks upon our methods have been read probably by most of the medical men and dentists in Boston and have been discussed a little, there has not been the least ripple raised in either the medical or dental professions. With us the relationship between the specialists and the general practitioners is most cordial and confidential. It is an every-day occurrence for the surgeon and the physician to send to the dentist a patient for his examination, in cases where the general practitioner is in doubt, particularly in regard to some blind cases of neuralgia; and some of the pleasantest and most successful cases of treatment have been those in which that mutual confidence has been manifested. My experience is that in these personal matters one of the chief causes of the unpleasantness is a misapprehension of the facts; and I think the wisest course to take is simply to quietly go about one's business, do his duty as he understands it, and let such little excitements die out, as they are sure to do in a short time.

Adjourned.

E. T. Payne, D.D.S., Secretary.

FIEST DIST1I0T DENTAL SOCIETY, STATE OF NEW YOEK.

The First District Dental Society of the State of New York held a regular monthly meeting, Tuesday evening, March 3, 1885, in the rooms of The S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Company, corner of Broadway and Thirty-second street.

The vice-president, Dr. William Carr, in the chair.

Dr. C. F. W. Bodecker, chairman of the Clinic Committee, reported as follows: At the clinic, to-day, Dr. Theodore Weber presented two patients with cleft palate. For one of them he had constructed a plate with a bulb which enters the cleft of the soft palate. The apparatus had been worn for nearly three weeks, and the patient showed some improvement in speech. The other patient was merely exhibited to show the difference in reading with and without the apparatus, which was constructed at the clinic before the Central Dental Association of Northern New Jersey two weeks before. Of course there was not much improvement, but enough to be noticeable. Both cases were congenital clefts. Dr. J. A. Bishop, of this city, kindly brought one of his obturators, and also one ol the old Dr. Stearns's apparatus, the first soft-rubber vela that were ever constructed. There was also exhibited (I think by Dr. W. E. Truex) a tooth which had been removed from the position occupied by the left upper central, in shape resembling a regular molar, but not quite so large, and with but a single root, which was very thick and bulky, and about the normal length of the root of a permanent third molar. Dr. J. Allen Osmun, of Newark, N. J., sent a patient about ten years old, with a cleft palate and hare-lip upon which an operation had been performed, but not with great success. The lip was firmly attached to the gum and the superior maxillary bone, and was thus immovable. The boy could not articulate at all. The upper lip was so out of proportion to the lower one that Dr. Goodwillie, who was present, advised another operation for the purpose of loosening the upper lip, and to bring the nose, which was rather high, a little downwards, and also to remove some atrophied tissue from the septum of the nose. Dr. G-oodwillie thinks he can, by another operation, make the boy present a much better appearance, and that afterwards an obturator can be worn. Dr. Keese, of Brooklyn, presented a patient for whom he had put on, with the Beese metal, two artificial crowns—the right superior cuspid and second bicuspid. Dr. Beese assured us that the roots were nothing but very thin shells, and that with no other method would he have obtained as good results. The method I will describe: The root-canal, previously dried, is pressed full of wax, and to this is attached a plain rubber tooth. The tooth and wax are then withdrawn and the wax hardened with ice. After replacing it, to insure perfect position, the wax model with the tooth in position is put into a flask and cast in the same manner as an ordinary Keese metal plate. It will then be found to fit the root exactly. Dr. Beese fastens the crown to the root with a very little thin oxyphosphate. The attendance at the clinic was between sixty and seventy.

Incidents Of Office Practice.

Dr. Frank Abbott. What I am about to offer, while perhaps not exactly an incident of office practice, is certainly an interesting subject, I think, to all present. We have heard not a little during the past few months about the Herbst method of rubbing gold into teeth. Believing that a process might be employed that would be even easier, more rapid and accurate in its operation, possibly, than that with the engine, I have had some instruments made to carry out my idea. Dr. Shumway, of Plymouth, Mass., was the first, I believe, to introduce the method of condensing gold in teeth with smooth ivory-pointed instruments, and since that time I think he has modified his instruments, now using steel. This was spoken of in a paper read before the New York Odontological Society, some months since, by Professor Fillebrown, of Harvard University. Not being particularly impressed with any of the instruments I had seen, I presumed to invent some of my own. They are, as you see, to be used by hand, and consist of six instruments, graduated in size from small to large, curved at an angle of about thirty degrees, having on the end a smooth bulb somewhat of the form of a ball burnisher, but differing from it in that they are gradually tapered from the largest portion to the neck. The instruments were made for me by Mr. Biddle, and are tempered particularly for the purpose they are intended to serve. The end of the instrument is almost as hard as steel can be made, and the neck so tempered that it will not easily break. In using these instruments I place a thick layer ot gold at the cervical wall, where I have the opportunity in a large cavity, rubbing it firmly against the wall. In the centre of the filling I use the automatic mallet, but carry the gold against the walls of the cavity with these burnishers, following with the mallet as the centre is reached. By this means the danger of cracking off bits of •enamel from the walls is more surely avoided.

Dr. Hodson. How do you get your cohesion?

Dr. Abbott. One would suppose the gold would not cohere under a-n instrument so smooth as those are, simply by putting one layer upon another and rubbing the instrument over them; but that in a measure is a mistake; it will cohere to such an extent that if you fill a cavity or a steel matrix with it, and take out the plug, it is apparently as solid as though driven in with a mallet; showing that there is a much more solid continuity of the gold than it would be supposed possible to obtain in that way. However, I do not consider the cohesion sufficient for contour work. The advantage of this instrument is that it can be applied in places where it is impossible to apply the engine instrument without a sacrifice of toothsubstance. With it I use Wolrab's, Williams's, or the gold made by The S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Co. Either kind may be used in the same manner and with about the same results. This style of operating will enable us to use a kind of gold that may with greater facility be adapted to the teeth than that we have heretofore been in the habit of using, and save both time and labor. It is necessary to frequently cleanse the instrument of adhering gold, when the slightest stickiness is perceived, and for this purpose I use chamois covered with rouge, upon which the instrument is rubbed for a moment and is again in perfect order. The shape of the instrument is such as to readily leave the gold where it has been placed. I understand that Dr. Herbst has himself been using for a long time instruments by hand instead of with the engine.

[President Northrop takes the chair.]

Dr. Bodecker. I will say a few words about agate points, which I have used for the last six weeks, and with the greatest success. They were procured for me by Dr. Timme, of Hoboken, 1ST. J. With these instruments all necessity for cleaning the burnishers is done away with, and the rotation can be carried to such a high degree of velocity that the gold is made wonderfully cohesive and extremely hard without causing the slightest reaction of heat,—consequently without pain to the patient. The first grinding surface I filled in that way was for a lady who has always objected to the use of the mallet upon any of her teeth, and therefore it seemed to me a good case to experiment upon with the agate points. I used them for filling the entire grinding surface, the upper portion of which I generally complete with the mallet. When I took my corundum point to finish off the filling, I was astonished to find that it did not yield, and, thinking the corundum point was clogged or had been heated, I took up another, but it had no more effect than the first one. Since that time I have made several other grin ding-surface fillings by the same method. When the cavities are large and can be got at nicely, by using a pretty good-sized agate point, there is certainly, as far as I can see, an especial advantage in this method of operating. Any kind of gold, even the higher numbers, may be used, laying it the same as in any other method of filling. Take several leaves of gold together and rub them over with the agate point, and they will be found inseparably connected.

Dr. Abbott. There are certain considerations in reference to the agate point for the engine that are, perhaps, objectionable. One is that the point of junction of the agate and the steel must of necessity be considerably larger than an all-steel one would have to be, or than the agate would have to be alone. That makes it difficult to get the point into a cavity to the necessary depth, unless the orifice is quite large. Then, again, if the agate is run into a very deep cavity, there is danger of breaking it by pressure. Another difficulty is in keeping the agate in the steel head solidly, so that it will not wiggle around after using it a little. Another, that may not have been noticed, is the difficulty of making the agates as small as we require them, and perfectly round. From what I have seen of them, they do not seem to be as perfectly round as steel can be turned; but there is a very serious objection to the use of steel, which Br. Bodecker has spoken of,—namely, the heat caused by friction, which is so great as to catfse the patient considerable disturbance; and also the clogging of the gold, which sticks to the instrument and leaves it in a rough state. To produce the condition that Dr. Herbst calls the cohesive surface, the patient is made uncomfortable, and the instrument requires frequent running upon some substance to remove the adhering gold.

Dr. Bodecker. Dr. Abbott speaks of the difficulty of getting perfectly round agates, and I was of the same opinion as he in regard to it, and told Dr. Timme that they were not good on that account, but when I came to use them I found that instead of this being an objection it was a decided advantage. Since then I have made use of small burnishers that are four-cornered, which I obtained from The S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Co., and you have no idea how much faster they solidify the gold. It is certainly true that agate breaks very easily, but where its rotation is at a high velocity you do not need to apply any great pressure. The facility with which it will condense the gold and adapt it to the walls of the cavity is simply charming. I have examined some of the fillings with a microscope that I had made for that purpose several years ago, and I found them absolutely perfect; there is not a single defect to be seen in them, even with a power of two-thirds. That is to say, almost every filling made with the mallet that I have examined under the microscope showed many imperfections, but the fillings burnished around the edges of the cavity by means of the agate points are absolutely perfect.

President Northrop. We will now hear from our excellent friend, Professor Grarretson, of Philadelphia, with whom most of you, I presume, are better acquainted than I am, and I therefore need not introduce him.

[The report of remarks made by Dr. Grarretson we are unable to publish in the present number, owing to lack of time on the part of this gentleman to revise the proof. We trust it will be furnished in time for our succeeding issue.—Editor Dental Cosmos.]