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THE SIXTEENTH CENTUR}' \\)\)

and swollen; an incision inro rluin sliowctl that rhc tccrh were reach to
come out, if onlv their eruption had heen facilitated In lancing at the
right time. Pare and the other doctors were ot the unanimous ojiinion
that death was caused solely by the impossibility of cutting the teeth on
account of the hardness of the gums.
Among the many strange cases given in Book XIX (^Des monstres et
prodiges), Pare also speaks—trusting to the word of Alexander Benedetti
—of the case of a woman, who, after the complete loss ot her teeth caused
by age, cut them all again at eight}- years of age.
Although Pare treats so amply and with such competence all that
concerns dental diseases and their cure, he does not make the least
allusion to the stopping of teeth, beyond recommending, as had aready
been done by Celsus, that when a tooth that is to be extracted shows a
laree cavitv, the latter should be well tilled with linen or lead, so that the
tooth be not fractured under the pressure of the instrument and so leave
the root behind in the alveolus.
A century before Ambroise Pare, Giovanni d'Arcoli had already
mentioned the tilling of teeth with gold leaf, and, as we have seen already,
there is very good reason to believe that the practice of this operation
dated back to a still earlier period. How is it, then, that the illustrious
Very probably stoppings
French surgeon does not say a word about this ?
were not at all in use among French dentateiirs and perhaps, even in
Italy, this operation was only rarely carried out.
Jacques Houllier (1498 to 1562), a celebrated French physician and
surgeon, also known under the Latinized name of Jacobus Hollerius,
was the first to stand out, although timidl}-, against the theory of dental
worms. He did not decidedly deny their existence, this having been
affirmed by so many illustrious writers; he, however, speaks ot them
as if the point were a doubtful one: ''It is said that worms are generated
in the teeth, which corrode the teeth themselves, and produce a pain which
is not very violent and causes itching with little or no salivation {vermes
ajunt suhnasci dentibus, et hos corrodere, a quihiis dolor non ita fortis,
pruriginosus, nulla ant paiica salivatio^.
But even while putting in doubt the existence of dental worms, he be-
lieves it his duty to enumerate the various remedies, recommended tor
their destruction. As to fumigations with the seeds of the hyoscyamus,
Houllier, declares that what is believed by the common people, and what
has been written bv doctors of antiquity about worms being killed and
seen to fall from the teeth by the effect of these fumigations, is all nonsense.
In fact, he says, when the seeds of the h\osc\amus are burnt there fly
away from them what appear to be little worms, even if the tumes do not
reach the worm-eaten tooth. (Quod autem vulgus sibi persuadet, et
ab autiquis mcdicis scriptum est de suffumigio e seniine hyoscyami, videtur