Page 206 - My FlipBook
P. 206
196 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES
ment la peine dudit Picard, se teut, n'osant declarer audit maistre ce
beau chef d'oeuvre; et ainsi le pauvre badaud de village s'en alia quitte;
et pour une dent qu'il pensoit faire arracher, en remporta trois en sa
bourse, et celle qui luy causoit le mal en sa bouche."' Pare adds in con-
clusion : " Partant je conseille a ceux qui voudront faire arracher les dents,
qu'ils aillent aux vieux dentateurs, et non aux jeunes qui n'auront encore
reconneu leurs fautes.""
But let us now return to our subject. After the extraction of a tooth,
it is necessary—says Pare—to leave the wound to bleed freely, so that
the part may get rid of the morbid humors; then the gums and the
alveolus must be pressed, on both sides, with the fingers, to readjust the
socket, which will have been widened and sometmies even broken in
extracting the tooth. After this, the patient should rinse his mouth
with oxycrate; and when the weather is cold and windy, the patient
should take care to avoid fluxion in the other teeth.
The following chapter speaks 'V^ la limositc ou rouilliire des dents,
et de la luaniere de les conserver."
After meals the mouth must be rinsed with water and wine, or with
water with a little vinegar added to it, and the teeth cleaned from all
residues of food, so that their putrefying may not spoil the teeth and make
the breath fetid. An earthy yellowish substance, like rust, often forms
on the teeth from want of cleanliness and also when they are not used to
masticate; this substance corrodes the teeth, just as rust corrodes iron.
It is necessary to remove this substance, by scraping the teeth with small
instruments suitable for the purpose, and then the teeth themselves must
I will here tell a story of a master barber living at Orleans, named maistre Fran9ois
'
Louys, who had the honor of pulling a tooth better than any one else, so that on Saturdays
many country folks having toothache came to him to have them pulled out, which he did
very dexterously with a pelican, and when he had done, threw it on a bench in his shop.
Now he had a new servant, Picard, tall and strong, who wanted to pull teeth like his master.
It happened that whilst the said Fran9ois Louys was dining, a villager wanting a tooth
pulled, Picard took his master's instrument and tried to do like him, but instead of taking
out the bad tooth, he knocked and tore out three good ones for him, who, feeling great
pain and seeing three teeth out of his mouth, began to cry out against Picard, but he, to make
him hold his pe;
such a noise, came out from table to know the cause of it and the reason of the quarrel,
but the poor peasant fearing the threats of Picard and still more after enduring such pain
being made to pay a threefold fee by the said Picard, was silent, not daring to reveal to the
master this fine piece of work of the said Picard; and thus the poor bumpkin went away,
and for one tooth that he had thought to have pulled, he carried away three in his pouch
and the one that burr him in his mouth."
-'
For which reason I advise those who would have their teeth pulled to go to the older
tooth-pullers, and not to the younger ones who will not yet have recognized their short-
comings."