"An interesting debate here sprung up on the action where two metals are used in one filling, such as gold and tin, the saliva acting as a medium, and where the baser metal is oxidized by exhalents and by imbibition through the bony tooth-structure." (Pennsylvania Society of Dental Surgeons, 1848.)
"A patient came to me and complained of pain in the teeth. Upon examination I found an amalgam filling next to one of tin. With a file I made a V-shaped separation, when they experienced immediate relief from pain." (Dr. Nevill, American Journal of Dental Science, 1867.)
In regard to the decay of teeth being dependent on galvanic action present in the mouth, Dr. Chase, in 1880, claimed that a tooth filled with gold would necessarily become carious again at the margin of the cavity, wherever the acid secretions constantly bathe the filling and tooth-substance. A tooth filled with amalgam succumbs to this electro-chemical process less rapidly, while one filled with tin still longer escapes destruction. The comparative rapidity with which teeth filled with gold, amalgam, or tin, are destroyed is expressed by the numbers 100, 67, 50. He prepared pieces of ivory of equal shape and size, bored a hole in each, and filled them. After they had been exposed to the action of an acid for one week, they had decreased in weight,—viz, piece filled with gold, 0.06; amalgam, 0.04; tin, 0.03.
"With tin and gold, some have the superstition that the electricity attendant upon such a filling will in some way be injurious to the tooth; it matters not which is on the outside, when rolled and used as non-cohesive cylinders each appears. We say that neither experimentally, theoretically, nor practically can any good or bad result be expected from the electrical action of a tin-gold filling on tooth-bone, and neither will the pulp be disturbed." (Dr. W. D. Miller, Independent Practitioner, August, 1884.)
"When the bottom of a cavity is filled with tin which is tightly (completely) covered with gold, there is practically no galvanic action and there is no current generated by contact of tin and gold,—i.e., no current leaves the filling to affect the dentin. That portion of tin which forms the base is more positive than a full tin filling would be. The effect is to cause the surface exposed to dentin to oxidize more than tin would do alone; in that there is a benefit. In very porous dentin there is enough moisture to oxidize the tin, by reason of the current set up by the gold." (Dr. S. B. Palmer.)
Electricity generated by heat is called thermo-electricity. If a cavity with continuous walls is half filled with tin and completed with gold, or half filled with silver and completed with gold, and the junctions of the metal are at 201⁄2° C. and 191⁄2° C., if the electrical action between the tin and gold be 1.1, the action between the silver and gold will be 1.8, thus showing the action in silver and gold to be nearly two-thirds more than in the tin and gold, a deduction which favors the tin and gold.
Rubbing two different substances together is a common method of producing an electric charge. Is there not more electricity generated during mastication on metal fillings than when the jaws are at rest? Friction brings into close contact numerous particles of two bodies, and perhaps the electrical action going on more or less all the time through gold fillings (especially when other metals are in the mouth) accounts for a powdered condition of the dentin which is sometimes found under cohesive gold fillings, but not under tin.