Oral pathology and practice : a text-book for the use of students in dental colleges and a hand-book for dental practitioners / by W.C. Barrett.

  • Barrett, W. C. (William Cary), 1834-1903.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oral pathology and practice : a text-book for the use of students in dental colleges and a hand-book for dental practitioners / by W.C. Barrett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    patient once secured, especially that of a child, the nervous system will without injury undergo, or even be insensible to, pain that tinder other circumstances would be unbearable, because the deadly influence of shock is avoided. It may readily be conceived, then, that the subject is of paramount importance to the operative ■dentist, and that it is his bounden duty to study it with care. In this connection, the remarks upon nervous influence in the chapter on Hypersensitive Dentine will be found useful. The distinction between shock and collapse is one not easily made plain, nor is it necessary here to draw a fine discriminating line. It is sufficient if we consider shock as the result of either mental or physical violence, while collapse is the final conse- quence of continued exhaustion. Thus the impact of a bullet may induce shock, but the slow bleeding that may succeed it will finally end in collapse. Shock may not only be the result of different kinds of injury, physical or mental, but it may assume different forms. It is im- possible to draw a clear line of demarkation that shall place in separate categories all those which are possible, but for con- venience they may be classed as torpid, excitable, and delayed. In torpid, or apathetic, shock the symptoms may be almost ■entirely referred to vaso-motor paralysis. The circulation is mate- rially modified. There will be a pallor of the skin and of the mucous membrane, with coldness, especially of the extremities, and the patient may be covered with a cold perspiration. The expression of the face is changed or lost, the pupil of the eye is •dilated and does not respond readily to light. There is irregular- ity of the action of the heart, with a weak, thready, and perhaps almost imperceptible pulse. The respiration becomes slower and more superficial. There may be partial or complete insensibility, mental inactivity, and loss of control of the voluntary muscles. There will be depressed bodily temperature, perhaps to be followed by a corresponding rise, and in some instances nausea, and possibly vomiting. In excitable, or erethistic, shock the patient is restless, irrita- ble, easily disturbed, perhaps uncontrollable. There is found a disordered pulse, with irregular breathing and dilated pupils. Notwithstanding the actually depressed condition, there will be the appearance of unnatural activity. The sufferer may per-