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216 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES

anything special about it, save that its crown had been very skilfully
covered with a thin plate of gold.
In spite of this the discussions on the portentous tooth continued for
a long time; and even one hundred years after, that is, in 1695, a new
dissertation appeared on the golden tooth.
The greater number of those who wrote on this subject did not throw
the slightest doubt upon the reality of the fact, but only sought to explain
in the most varied wavs the genesis of this phenomenon.
Duncan Liddel. Among those who had the good sense not to put
faith in the thing, and who very decidedly affirmed that this was a mere
case of imposture, Duncan Liddel, a Scotchman and professor in a German
University, deserves to be recorded.^
He had heard that the famous gold tooth was larger than the others,
and that the neighboring molar was wanting; from which he argued
that this was simply the case of a tooth the crown of which had been
covered with a plate of gold. Answering the arguments of Horst, he ac-
cused him of gross ignorance in the most elementary notions of astronomy,
and this for having affirmed that when the famous child was born, that is,
December 22, the sun happened to be in conjunction with Saturn in the
sign of the Ram. As the sun does not enter the sign of the Ram until
March, it it had been there on December 22 this would have been a
greater portent than if the whole body of the child had been formed of
nothing else but teeth of gold!'-

' Liddelius, Tractatus de dente aureo pueri Silesiani, Hamburg, 1626.
-[In the introductory portion of Liddell's work on the "Golden Tooth" is pubhshed a
number of letters bearing on the case, among others one which gives rather a circum-
stantial account of the imposture, and of which the following is a translation:
" Herr Balthazer Caminaeus sends Greeting:
" For your letter, most kind Herr Doctor Caselius, in which you explicitly desired me
to thank (my) colleagues for their good wishes, ' wedding wishes,' and to imform you as
to the ' Golden Tooth,' I have long been in debt to you—not that I intended to leave
your letter unanswered, but because no messengers presented themselves. Now that I
have found one, I announce that I have obeyed your commands. As for the ' Golden
Tooth,' I ought not to hide from you that we have more than once marvelled at your
shrewdness, in that you are so anxious to ascribe the devices of wickedness and the tricks
(fakes) of cunning to Nature. For it was no portent, only a deception and pure cheat, so
that unless some Lemnian (Prometheus or Vulcan) should come to their aid, these acute
authors will, nay, already are, a by-word to those who are more cautious and not so prone
to believe. For the ' Golden Toothed ' boy, according to the account brought thither by
many persons, both by letter and oral report, some of whom had themselves seen this
wonder, hailed from a village near Schwidnitz in Silesia, and had been so trained by his
swindling father or master, th;ir, at his will, whenever in any assembly of men, some very
simple and illiterate persons desired to see the tooth and had paid the fee, for the rascals
made great gains, he would open his mouth wide and allow himself to be touched. But
if educated men and those who seemed likely to make more careful scrutiny and exper.-