Effect Of Older Age Research Articles

Russian-American Cultural Relations

T HE first attempt at the establishment of cultural relations between Russians and Americans, after the Revolution in Russia and the restoration of order and production under the Soviet regime, may be said to have occurred in the field of medicine, with the visits to the U.S.S.R. of Dr. Henry E. Sigerist, the visit to the United States of the famous Dr. Pavlov, the reciprocal sojourn in the Soviet Union of Dr. W. H. Gantt, and the gradual building up of an interchange between the medical leaders in the United States and those in the Soviet Union of discoveries, knowledge, and experience, particularly during the war years. The publication in New York of the American Review of Soviet Medicine, now in its fourth year, has greatly aided in this interchange, as have the visits of Russian doctors, the last in the fall of I946, to the United States, and the less frequent trips of American doctors to Moscow. This relationship seems now firmly established, and has been productive of great benefits to each country. At the moment, tests are being carried on in several American cities of the serum developed by Dr. Bogomolets, for the treatment of cancer and the delaying of the effects of old age on the human body; and other exchanges of experience, particularly in the field of blood transfusion, have been numerous.

The Innervation of Teeth

The author, using the staining methods of Bielschowski, Gross, Beckwith, Weigert-Pal and Cajal in frozen and serial paraffin and celloidin sections, has investigated the dental innervations of man, monkey, dog, cat, and guinea-pig in health and disease. He discusses the anatomy and physiology of the dental innervation and the effect of section of the inferior dental nerve on the trophic, vasomotor, protective, and sensory functions, with special reference to the relation between dental disease and neuropathies. He describes the innervation of the tooth germ and the nature of the growing fibrils seen before calcification in the dentinal papilla and draws attention to the innervation of the periodontal membrane. He has found that these nerves anastomose across the crest of the interdental septa with their fellows and demonstrates coiled sub-cemental nerve-endings. He has been unable to find any difference in the eruption and casting of teeth after section of the inferior dental nerve, and does not find degeneration of the nerves of deciduous teeth prior to casting to be inevitable. He discusses the effect of local anaesthesia on the dental pulp, some of the causes of odontalgia and neuralgia and the effect of old age and general disease on the dental innervation. He has failed with lethal or continued sublethal doses of ethyl and methyl alcohol, lead or tetanus and diphtheria toxins, using the oral, gastric, subcutaneous and intravenous route, to produce dental neuronic change. The effects of fracture of teeth and jaws, the introduction of arsenic into the pulp chamber and amputation and extirpation of the pulp are examined. The vital resistance of the pulp and the significance of granulomata as a protective mechanism are discussed. The author has found that after extraction although there is at first degeneration of the nerve-fibres concerned, there may subsequently be regeneration, sometimes in the form of plexiform neuroma. He has produced degenerative changes in both the nerves and the Gasserian ganglia on both the operated and unoperated sides by the introduction of tetanus and diphtheria toxins into extraction sockets, where the neuronic involvement is proportionate to the degree of trauma with which the extraction is effected. The rôle of innervation in tooth movement during eruption and orthodontic correction, and after the extraction of anterior teeth, has been investigated, the latter by roentgencinematography.

XVI. An account of an iliac passion, from a palsy of the large intestines; communicated to Dr. De Castro, F. R. S. Translated from the Latin, by Tho. Stack M. D. F. R. S

A Merchant, aged seventy, who had been accustomed to hardships from his infancy, was, for the last six years, very subject to rheumatic pains; but, looking on his disorder as the effect of old age, he rejected all medical advice.