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122 SECOND PERIOD—THE MIDDLE AGES

unfortunately, have, for the most part, been lost. Rhazes did not have
recourse to the extraction of teeth, save as a last resource when every
other attempt at cure had proved useless ; which method would no doubt
have deserved high praise, had the author been inspired by the principles
of conservative surgery, rather than by unjustifiable fears. Caries of
the teeth is, according to him, identical with that of the bones. To
hinder its progress and propagation to the neighboring teeth, he advises
the carious cavity to be filled with a "cement" composed of mastic and
alum. We have here a laudable attempt at permanent stopping of
deca\ed teeth, although it is clear that the duration of such stopping,
owing to the nature of the materials emplo\'ed, could not be a long one.
Furthermore, he counselled the patient to abstain from the use of acid
food or drink and to rub the teeth with powder of gall-nuts and pepper.
To strengthen loosened teeth, he recommended astringent mouth washes
and sundr\' dentifrice powders. Others, parth' taken from Galen, are
recommended bv him for prophylactic purposes and for cleansing and
beautifying the teeth.
Against periodontitis and the pains produced by it, he sometimes
had recourse to bleeding. He commended, besides, opium, oil of roses,
pepper, and honey, and also the scarification of the gums and the appli-
cation of a leech. If, however, these remedies did not succeed, he applied
his theriac, which was composed of castoreum, pepper, ginger, storax,
opium, and other ingredients, to the roots of the teeth. If even this method
of cure failed, he touched the root of the diseased tooth with a red-hot
iron, or sought to provoke its fall by the use of special medicaments,
such as coloquintida and arsenic (a substance to which he had recourse,
particularly in those cases where there was ulceration of the gums).
It is no wonder that such means of cure would sometimes produce, as
a final result, the actual falling out of the tooth; and this, as is natural,
served to strengthen the belief that the same result could also be obtained
WMth less energetic remedies, but which were supposed to be equally
endowed with expulsory virtues.
Rhazes relates an interesting case of regeneration of a whole lower
jaw ; he, however, observes that the newly formed osseous mass was
less hard than the original bone.'
Ali Ahi3AS, another great Persian physician (who died in 994), wrote
a lengthy treatise on theoretic and practical medicine, one chapter of
which is dedicated to the diseases of the teeth. When a molar tooth is
affected by caries, and the pain cannot be subdued in any other way,
Ali Abbas applies, inside the carious cavity, the end of a small metallic
tube, into which he rrpcatedh introduces red-hot needles, leaving them

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