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190 THIRD PERIOD MODERN TIMES

Ambroise Pare, too, admits that the teeth grow throughout the whole
lifetime, and that the wearing away consequent on reciprocal friction and
mastication is compensated in this way.
Galen had already affirmed, and Ambroise Pare also held erroneously,
that the exquisite sensibility of the teeth aids the sense of taste.
In speaking of the development of the teeth, Ambroise Pare says only
that thev are already solid and osseous before birth, he himself having
observed this in dissecting the jaws of a child who had died immediately
after birth.
In Chapter VII, Book XIII,' Pare treats of fracture of the lower jaw.
The method of cure he proposes is altogether identical with that of Celsus.
With regard to the teeth, he says that "j; elles sorit Jivtsees, ebranlees,
oil separees hors de leiirs alveoles on petites eavites, elles doivent estre
reduites en leiirs places et seront liees et attache es contre celles qui sont
fermes, avecques un fil d'or ou d' argent, ou de lin. Et les y faut tenir
jusqiies a ce qu elles soient bien affermies, et le callus soient refait et rendu
solide.^^"
Toothache, says Pare,^ is, of all others, the most atrocious pain that
can torment a man without being followed by death. It depends, in
many cases, on a humorous fluxion of a hot or cold nature which flows
into the alveolus, forcing the tooth outward, loosening it, and causing
the patient so much pain on the slightest pressure being exercised on it,
that he cannot dare to bite with it in the least. If, however, the tooth
is corroded, hollowed out, or pierced to the root, the pain is so strong,
—
when the patient drinks particularly if the liquid is cold—that he seems
to have had a stab with a stiletto inside the tooth.
If the pain is acute and pungent, like that produced by needles being
thrust into the diseased tooth; if the patient complains of a strong pulsa-
tion at the root of the tooth, and in the temples; if the application of cold
remedies calms the pain, all these signs indicate that the cause of the evil
is heat. Instead, the cause of the pain may be held to be cold when the
patient complains of a great heaviness in the head, emits a quantity of
saliva, and finds relief in the application of hot remedies. In the treat-
ment of toothache one must fulfil the following three indications:
1. Regulate fittingly the mode of living.
2. Evacuate or dissipate the morbid humors; this may be effected
by various means, namely, by purgatives, by bleeding, by gingival

' Vol. ii, p. 307.
if rhcy art- divicUd, shaken, or separated from rlieir alveoli or little cavities, they
must be reduced into their places and should be bound and fastened against those that are
firm with a thread of gold, silver, or flax. And they must be held thus until they are quite
firm and the callus is formed and have become solid.
' I^il). XV, ch. xvi, vol.
ii, p. 443.