Page 102 - My FlipBook

104 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIQUITY

by rinsings of the mouth with hot water; in this way sometimes, as it were,
small worms are expelled."^
This passage of Scribonius Largus has given rise to the idea that the
dental caries depends upon the presence of small worms, which eat away
the substance of the tooth. Such an explanation must have well suc-
ceeded in satisfying the popular fancy ; and it is for this that such a
prejudice, although fought against by Jacques Houllier in the sixteenth
century, has continued even to our days.
With regard to this I would like to record the following fact: Not
many years ago there lived in Aversa, a small town near Naples, Italy, a
certain Don Angelo Fontanella, a violin player, who professed himself to
be the possessor of an infallible remedy against toothache. When sum-
moned by the sufferer, he carried with him, in a bundle, a tile, a large
iron plate, a funnel, a small curved tube adjustable to the apex of the
funnel, a piece of bees' wax, and a small packet of onion seed. Having
placed the tile on a table, the iron plate was put upon it, after it had been
heated red hot. Then the operator let a piece of bees' wax fall upon the
red-hot iron, together with a certain quantity of the onion seed; then,
having promptly covered the whole with the funnel and made the patient
approach, he brought the apex of the said funnel close to the sick tooth,
in such a way as to cause the prodigious, if somewhat stinking, fumes
produced by the combustion of the wax with the onion seed to act upon
it. In the case of a lower tooth, the above-mentioned curved tube was
adapted to the funnel, so that the fumes might equally reach the tooth.
The remedy, for the most part, had a favorable result, whether because
the beneficial effect was due to the action of the hot vapor on the diseased
tooth, or to the active principles resulting from the combustion of the
wax and onion seed, or to both, or perhaps also, at least in certain cases,
to the suggestion that was thus brought to bear upon the sufferer. It
would not be at all worth while to discuss here such a point. The
interesting part is that when the patient had declared that he no longer
telt the pain, Don Angelo, with a self-satisfied smile, turned the funnel
upside down, and showed on its internal surface a quantity of what he
pretended to be worms, which he affirmed had come out of the carious
tooth. Great was the astonishment of the patient and of the bystanders,
none of whom raised the least doubt as to the nature and origin of these
siiKiIl iKxiies, no one having the faintest suspicion even that these, instead
ol coming troiii the tooth, might come from the onion seed !
According to Scribonius Largus, toothache might also be taken away
l)\ timngations of burnt iiitumen. He affirms also that great benefit

' Siiffirc aiitcni ()|)()rtcr ore aptrro alterci semine carbonibus asperso, subinde os colluere
a(|ua calida; inttrdum tnim quasi vcrmiculi quidam eiciuntur.