On the distribution of the nerves of the dental pulp

Abstract

The mode of innervation of the dentine of the human tooth has long been a matter of controversy; while clinical evidence is strongly in favour of a nerve supply to this tissue, the difficulties met with in tracing nerve fibres in such a difficult substance to examine, as the dentine, has been a very considerable hindrance to the investigation. It has been very difficult to account for the passage of such very acute sensation from the periphery of the dentine in the absence of nerve fibres in that situation, and I have long felt, with others, that sensation in the tooth would be found to be conducted by nerve fibres, as in other tissues of the body. As long ago as 1891 I made preparations which appeared to show that nerve fibres from the pulp entered' the dentine, but, by the iron and tannin impregnation process I then employed, could not satisfactorily demonstrate it. During the last year I have, I think, with several methods of preparation, been successful in making it fully evident that the dentine is richly supplied with nerves from the pulp, which do not terminate, as has been hitherto generally supposed, at the inner margin of the dentine, but enter the tubules of that tissue and traverse them to their peripheral terminations at the enamel and cementum margins.