Tooth Graft

Almost 2,000 years ago, the Incas of Peru used to yank out aching teeth, then stick them back in their sockets and pray for them to grow firm again. It never worked.

Last week, Dentist C. W. Messinger of Houghton, Mich, told members of the Chicago Dental Society that he had streamlined the ancient practice of tooth replacement and that now it did work. First he extracts an abscessed tooth, and removes the jaw abscess. Then he scrapes out all the pulp in the root canal of the tooth, sterilizes it, and fills the shell with guttapercha. After he re-sterilizes it, he pushes the tooth back in its socket with his thumb. A gold frame is clamped on the tooth to hold it in place. After four weeks, said Dr. Messinger, the frame can be removed, for, although the tooth is not rooted to the jawbone, gum and tissue have grown solidly back around it and it can be used for chewing. He told of 65 replantations he made, each lasting about five years.

Although Chicago dentists enthusiastically applauded Dr. Messinger, dentists in Manhattan who soon got wind of the performance roundly denounced it. "Tooth replantation is an archaic, long-abandoned dangerous practice," said the Greater New York Bureau for Dental Information, official spokesman for Manhattan members of the American Dental Association. A replanted tooth is a foreign body, the Bureau warned. Even if sterilized, and even if it stays put, it may cause infection.

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