Hand-book of dental anatomy and surgery : for the use of students and practitioners / by John Smith.

Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hand-book of dental anatomy and surgery : for the use of students and practitioners / by John Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    principal forms of teeth in the lower animals may be briefly mentioned. The teeth of the human subject afford but a very limited and imperfect idea of these organs throughout the animal kingdom. Among the lower animals, the number, the form, the situa- tion, and the uses of teeth, vary to a very great degree. In Number we have them varying from the countless teeth of some fishes, to the solitary tooth of the monodon or narwhal—the tooth so well known for its resemblance to the unicorn's horn of heraldic notoriety. In Position, we have them not confined to the jaws, as in man, but, as in fishes and reptiles, scattered over all the bones of the mouth, the tongue, the gullet, and, if we include some still lower animals, such as crabs, beetles, and various insects, we find teeth, or organs corresponding to them, situated even in the stomach. In Form, again, we have them infinitely diversified. From simjDle flat plates, as in some of the ray and skate group of fishes, we have them modified, till we find them as- suming the form of the elephant's tusk, or the whalebone of the cetacean family, producing that peculiar substance. In their Uses we find them serving the purposes of attack in the lion;