Page 196 - My FlipBook

188 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES —
tooth in the roof of the mouth, near the opening which is in proximity
to the incisors/ and at Gubbio there is, in the monastery of the Trinita,
a nephew of the distinguished jurisconsult Girolamo Gabrielh, who at
the age of eighteen cut a tooth in the middle of the palate."
"Pliny and Solinus tell of individuals born with all their teeth. Other
authors, that Pheretes was without teeth all his life."
" I hold it to be a fable that some women lose a tooth for each child
they bear."
"In some cases it has happened that the falling out and renewal of
the teeth has not taken place before the age of thirteen or fourteen.
In other cases, the same teeth were shed and renewed twice, that is, once
after the seventh year, and again after the fourteenth year. It ought
also to be mentioned that in some young persons of twenty, the last molar,
or wisdom tooth, having been drawn, it was renewed during the same
year. Lastly, it is also to be noted that in strong and healthy young per-
sons, one of the other molars being extracted, it is sometimes renewed."^
In the last chapter^ the author alludes to some dental affections. In
referring to the fluxions to which teeth are subject, he says he has observed
more than one case in which such a quantity of matter resembling chalk
was collected in the alveoli, that these gradually being filled thereby, all
the teeth became loosened and dropped out little by little.
Speaking of dental diseases requiring surgical intervention, the author
remarks that dental surgery was, in his days, a most abject calling, not-
withstanding its having had, according to Cicero, a very high initiator
^sculapius, the god of medicine.
Ambroise Pare. Whilst the anatomy of the dental system was illus-
trated by the researches of Fallopius and Eustachius, the celebrated
French surgeon Ambroise Pare was contributing in the highest degree to
the progress of practical dentistry.
Ambroise Pare (Latinized Paraeus) was born at Bourg-Hersent in the
year 1517. His father and one of his brothers were box-makers; another
brother was a barber. We have no very precise information about the
early years of his life; so much is certain, however, that Ambroise Pare

' The inferior orifice of the foramen incisivum.
^ It is superfluous to say that these cases are unreal and simply dependent upon erroneous
observations; for instance, in the case of the second molar being extracted before the erupting
of the third, the second molar figured as, and supposed to be, the latter, when, finally, the
wisdom tooth appeared, it was believed to be the last molar renewed. It is no rare thing,
also, in these days, not only for unprofessional persons, but also for medical practitioners,
to fall into errors of this kind, especially because, in similar cases, the wisdom tooth, having
but a limited space in which to erupt, is in the habit of filling the void left by the second
molar, where it meets with less resistance.
' Page 93.