The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-08
ELECTRIcITY's LATEST TRIUMPH.

A Wonderful Invention, Which Rem
 ders the Work of the Dentist Pain
 less.
 Dr. w. H. Minor, the we'll known den tist, whose office is at 1902 Chapel street, has for the past few weeks been
 using electricity as an anaesthetic in
 his operating room. The electricity is applied by means of an apparatus, | which is the invention of Cleveland
 man, Dr. Horton. Dr. Horton himself
 spent a week in Dr. Minors office, giv- ing him instructions in applying it,and pr. Minor thoroughly understands every detail of the work He is the only dentist in the city who has it, and has been in successful operation In his
 office for the past two weeks, in which time many patients have tested it, and
 are delighted with it.
 l Medical men and medical societies en- dorse all that is claimed for the great | invention.
 | The invention itself is an electric obtunding process for the painless ex- l cavation of teeth and other minor oral
 surgery.
 1 Everybody knows that pain is the bete noir of the dental art. When den- | lists can give their patients freedom | from suffering while operating upon
 them, they confer a blessing not only ,tc, ht,f ttn,,, aI1 well, and invite a suffering humanity to have a portion of their i'll abated. The use of electricity as an anaes- thetic Is not new, but the achievement of it's successful application to dental work in rendering all forms of excava-
 ting perfectly painless seems to have fallen to the lot of a Clevelander Among the many and wonderful achiev- ments of the electrical science the pow CT of electricity to control pain Is not the least. A few years ago there seem | ed to be no escape from this suffering,
 but time and progress brought the be- ginning of help. The discovery of chloroform, followed by that of sul- | phuric ether were harbingers of better days. Frequent deaths, however, filled the minds of many with terror and re-
 gret. The discovefy of cocaine follow ed, but fell short of needs of dentists. Electricity, the possibility of which
 seem exhaustless, has this undeveloped factor. That is to say, 1t has the pow
 CT to make the dental nerves powerless | to produce pain.
 | The working of this new electrical
 process is perfectly simple, and thor ough knowledge of the anatomy and
 physiology of the dental structures and
 their proper relationship gives the key 1 to proper understanding of the action
 of Dr. Horton's invention.
 The process, first of all, has to do
 with the distribution of the fifth pair
 of nerves, which, through the gasserian
 ganglories, or second and third sections | of the fifth pair of nerves, give origin
 upon either side of the superior and in
 ferior maxillary nerves, which are dis | tributed to the teeth. These nerves
 regulate the nutrition of the teeth, and
 upon their integrity depends the
 healthy maintenance of the dental or gans. Being also nerves of sensation, they give rise to the sense of feeling,
 ard in diseased conditions are concern ed in producing pain. When the sensi- tive function of these nerves are con-
 trolled no pain can be produced. Dr. | Horton's invention consists in a method i of so applying electricity locally to the | parts that complete anesthesia is pro-
 duced. For that purpose the galvanic current is used. One pole is applied, | by a. properly constructed electrode, to
 the right or left side of the face, as the
 case may require, over that set of | nerves which connects the tooth and | the brain. The other pole is connected | to the excavating instrument, which,
 when applied to the tooth, completes the circuit and establishes the desired anesthetic condition. In a few words,
 this process produces short current and defects the pain usually attendant
 upon dental work from the tooth with | out the slightest inconvenience or un- | comfortable circumstance.
 | It is an electrical apparatus, pure and simple, and none of the known
 anaesthetics are used with it in any l manner.