Page 232 - My FlipBook

CHAPTER XL

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

The first signs of the separation of dental science from general medicine
were to be perceived in the sixteenth century, the period m which, as we
have seen, the earliest dental monographs appeared. From that time
this separation tended to accentuate itself ever more strongly; dental
monographs became more numerous and dentistry progressed ever
more rapidly, both in its scientific and practical aspects.
In the seventeenth century, about which we are now to speak, we
shall have to call attention to many facts of the highest importance for
the development of dentistry, and with regard to literature, it is worthy
of note that while the publications on dentistry that appeared in the
various countries of Europe during the preceding century only amounted
to about twenty (taking also into account several pamphlets on the
famous golden tooth!), in the seventeenth century the number was con-
siderably higher, that is, about a hundred. We shall speak of the most
important of these, as also of the works on general medicine or on surgery
of the same period, that present some interest from the point of view of
dentistry.
JoHANN Stephan Strobelberger, physician to the imperial baths
of Carlsbad, published in the year 1630 a very curious book, the title of
which, being translated, runs somewhat as follows: Compleie Treatise
of Gout in the teeth, or, more properly said, of Odontagra or toothache;
in which are set forth, theoretically and practically, for the use of physicians
and surgeons, the means of mitigating these pains, as well as the various
modes of ably extracting teeth with or without instruments^^
This book merely presents some interest, because it gives us a clear
idea of the pitiful state in which the dental art still was in the first half
of the seventeenth century, and shows us most clearly what enormous
progress our specialty has made in little less than two centuries. Apart
from this, Strobelberger's monograph is of no importance, it being

' joh. ca's;in.i emeriti, etc., de cleiitiuiii podagre, seu
St(.|)h;tni Sriobtllitii^cri, tluriniatri
potiiis de odontagta, doloreve dentiiim, tractatus ahsolutissinuis, in quo, tarn doloris istius
mitigandi rationes, (|uam dentium sine et cum ferro a.tificiose extrahendorum varii modi,
theoretice ac practice proponuntur, in medicorum ac chirurgorum (|uorumvis gratiam.
Lepsi;i', 1630.