Dr. Otto Arnold:—If you will impress the patients that everything is being done to ease the pain, you will succeed. The Niles apparatus, which throws a jet of vaporing alcohol upon the dentine, is very effective. A few inhalations of chloroform have a good effect.
Dr. C. R. Butler:—Small amounts of chloroform are very dangerous. It would be as safe as nitrous oxide if the people had as much confidence in it.
Dr. H. A. Smith:—Doctors disagree as to that. Dr. Hamilton says "ether may be used to the 'ether glow' without a particle of danger." Quacks are often successful, because they give a full dose. The use of such anæsthetics is dangerous, but quacks, like fools, rush in where wise men fear to tread.
Dr. P. S. Bollinger:—I have tried nearly all obtundents, but have been most successful in working upon the imagination of the patient. Purchase a firm hold on the instrument.
Dr. C. R. Butler:—The fountain-pen answers beautifully as an instrument for using volatile agents.
Dr. J. Taft:—The rubber cloth must be used. There should be dehydration and reduction of temperature. Cold is so successful as an obtundent, because it does not vary like other agents. A combination of therapeutic agents might be used in the Niles atomizer.
Dr. C. R. Butler, Cleveland, O., Paper, "A Means of Holding the Rubber Dam, While Operating Upon Labial Surface Cavities."
Many appliances for this purpose have been devised, but when applied are often very painful and difficult to carry the rubber over.
In these very low cavities a hole is drilled below the margin of the cavity far enough to allow it to be excavated and still leave enough for strength, and into this hole a platina-iridinum or gold wire is screwed, first dipping in phosphate cream. The cud is cut off within an eighth of an inch of the cementum and the rubber carried over the projecting point, by which it is afterwards held. Sometimes two such pins will be found necessary.