This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...the tail occurred in forty-eight hours. "The action of arsenic appeared somewhat accelerated when a glass ring was applied close to the root of the tail. In more than forty cases there was not one in which the action of the arsenic extended beyond the ring, and the action was not appreciably affected by enclosing the tails in plaster casts. The action of the arsenic is of a progressive nature, beginning at the point of application and extending gradually in each direction." 1 Dental Cosmos. 1894. Flagg1 devitalized ten pulps and removed them, cut off the portion of the bulb of each which had contact with the arsenic, and tested the ten pulps together by Reinsch's test. Arsenic was found, estimated at a one-hundred-thousandth part of a grain, or one-millionth of a grain for each pulp. Prinz has later confirmed this. Allowing for possible mechanical introduction or contact of arsenic during extirpation, the quantity of arsenic introduced by the circulation must be very minute indeed. Flagg argued that as the pulp subsequently putrefies it cannot have died as the result of arsenical poisoning alone. In the roots with large foramina arsenic may be absorbed, as areas of devitalization of the apical and overlying gum tissue have been noted. In several apparently authentic cases the pericementum of a mature tooth has been said to be destroyed from the apex down and the tooth lost. I have never seen such a case resulting from the arsenical method alone in either clinical or private practice, although cases of marginal gum, alveolar, and pericemental death, beginning as the result of leakage or application to perforations, have been noted. It is probable that as stasis proceeds the apical portion of the pulp becomes involved in advance...