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THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 187

In the two following chajMcrs,' the author speaks in a niasteiK anil
adniirahle manner of the functions of the teeth and of tlnir urilitw
Among man\- other true and interesting ohservations, he remarks that
b\' the loss of their teeth even the most powerful dogs become cowards.
Besides what concerns the human teeth, excellent notions of compara-
tive anatomy, above all in what regards the monkey, the dog, and the rumi-
nants, are to be found in this little but most precious book of Kustachius.
The teeth, savs he, are not equall\- hard in all animals, and many
ancient authors have affirmed that ferocious animals ha\e much liarder
teeth than tame ones.
Chapter XXIX, relating to dental anomalies, is one of the most inter-
esting. We here quote the greater part of it.
"Some historians relate that Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, Eurifeus, of
Greece, and many others, had, instead of teeth, a continuous bone, fur-
rowed by somewhat deep vertical lines, in no way different from what
one sees in the multiple molars of the goat. It has never happened
to me, says Eustachius, to witness a similar union of all the teeth; I
have, however, sometimes observed continuity between three or four
molars, precisely in the same manner as in sheep. It also once happened
to me to observe in the case of an old man, a fellow citizen of mine, that
the teeth were covered up on ever\" side b\' a hard and almost ston\- sub-
stance, and no longer exhibited any trace of separation, offering instead
the appearance of a single bone."
"One reads that Timarchus, of Cyprus, had two rows or series of teeth
and Hercules three."
The author never had an\" opportunit\- of observing any such anomalies;
notwithstanding, he refers to cases of the kind observed by other anato-
mists of his time, and, in a particular manner, to the case of a triple dental
series in a youth who died at the age of eighteen. As the truth of the
fact was testified to by highly respectable medical men, Eustachius lends
—
faith thereto. "Neither can it be said"—he adds "that in the case
we are speaking of the new teeth erupted from other sockets before the
temporary ones were shed, for there would then have been only a double
and not a triple series; indeed, the series would not even have been double
along all the line, but only along the line of the temporary teeth; and
besides this, the double series would not have been maintained up to
eighteen years of age—the time of the death of the subject—but only until
the shedding of the deciduous teeth."
"That teeth are sometimes cut in the palate is a fact attested to by
Alessandro de Benedetti and others. It has also occurred, within my own
experience, to observe this in the person of a Roman woman, who had a

' Chap, xxvii, xxviii.