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FIRST PERIOD—JNTIOUITT
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revived under the name of massage). He recommends, besides, special
rubbing of the cheeks (to be carried out with a rough cloth), and also of
the gums and teeth, and indicates a great number of medicaments, some
of which are to be used during the paroxysms and others during the
periods of calm. In regard to the use of narcotics, he very shrewdly
observes that such remedies take away sensibility but not pain. Some
doctors of those days, for the cure of odontalgia, had recourse to sternuta-
tories, or to the dropping of special medicaments into the nose or into the
ear, but Celius Aurelianus seems to have put but little faith in such
means of cure. He, moreover, solemnlv reproaches those who, to cure
odontalgia, are too hasty in having recourse to the extraction of the aching
footh. To remove a part, says he, is not to cure it; and ii every tooth
that aches has to be extracted, it would be necessary to draw them all
out when the\- all ache. Therefore, before having recourse to extrac-

FiG. 3i

Roman dental forceps found (1894) at Hamburg, Germany, in the ancient
Roman castle Saalburg. (Geist-Jacobi.)

tion, every other means of cure should first be tried. If the removal of
the tooth becomes indispensable, he advises that it should never be per-
formed during the violence of the pain, for from this serious consequences
might arise (a prejudice which has not yet entirely vanished, and which
is met with, sometimes, not only among common people, but even among
physicians); and a still greater danger would be the extraction of teeth
neither carious nor loose, seeing that, by consensus, the muscles, the eyes,
and the brain might suffer. The author, on this point, quotes Herophilus
and Heraclides of Tarentum, who related some cases in which the
extraction of a tooth was followed by death. He alludes, moreover,
to a passage of Krasistratus, regarding the "odontagogon of lead"
plinnhrtim fjdontngogurn) which was exposed in the temple of Apollo
(
at Delphi; as much as to show that it was not lawful to extract teeth