Plugger.
（
Dentistry.) A dentist's instrument for driving and packing a filling material into an excavated hole in a carious tooth.
They are of various forms, — hook, curved, or straight; with square, pointed, circular, edged, rounded ends; and with star, serrated, file-marked, and other terminations.
Some of the tools are pushed by the hand; others are driven, like a punch, with a mallet; a third form is automatic, and the pressure on the filling brings the mallet into operation.
See dental hammer.
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Dental plugger. |
In
Fig. 3835, the plugger has a pushing tool at one end and a hook-shaped pulling tool at the other, each operated upon by a hammer subject to the action of a spiral spring and other mechanism inclosed within the case.
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Dental hammer. |
In
Fig. 3836, the pressure of the plugger upon the gold in the cavity of the tooth gives movement to a vibrating hammer which strikes upon the extremity of the plugger.
The intermission of the pressure permits the extension of the spring and raises the hammer.
The
electric mallet is an automatic dental instrument for condensing the filling or plug in a tooth by a rapid succession of strokes imparted by means of electro-magnetism.
The peculiar mechanism consists of a magnet or magnets, a pulsating armature, and a retracting spring with positive and negative wires and an automatic circuit-breaker.
The magnet or magnets are arranged in the handle, and an armature vibrates in a case behind the bit.
The action of the armature makes and breaks the circuit.
In one form, the plugger, being fast to the coils, partakes of the jar imparted to the plunger.
In another form, the plunger has a sliding motion when struck by the armature hammer, and does not involve the coils in the jar of the blow.
In still another form, the armature is fixed, and the magnet, in modified form, vibrates within the case and delivers the stroke.
The electric attraction in each case imparts the effective stroke.
The wires incased in insulating material enter the handle end of the instrument, and by their flexibility permit its manipulation by the operator, who has simply to hold the bit in proper positions until the operation is completed.
The application of this instrument in larger size to stone-cutting and other work has been proposed.
Green's electro-magnetic mallet, manufactured by
S. S. White of
Philadelphia, for packing and condensing gold in filling teeth, strikes direct and very rapid blows, perfectly adjustable as to force, and either continuous or dependent upon
touch; the blow being given when the point of the plugger is pressed upon the filling, and ceasing when the pressure is removed.
Among the ancients some success was obtained in the art of dentistry.
Casselius was a dentist in the reign of the
Roman triumvirs, and gold was used for the filling.
Nearly 500 B. C. gold was thus used, and gold wire was employed to hold
artificial teeth in position.
A fragment of the tenth of the
Roman tables,
[
1750]
450 B. C., has reference to preventing the burial of any gold with the dead except that bound around the teeth.
Herodotus declares that the Egyptians had a knowledge of the diseases of teeth and their treatment 2000 B. C. In Martial, Casselius is mentioned as either filling or extracting teeth.
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Green's electro-magnetic mallet. |
