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THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURV 221

XXX), blistering and cauterizing (Chapter XXXI), masticatories, viz.,
substances intended to be chewed for the purpose of exciting salivary
secretion (Chapter XXVI), sternutatories, viz., substances which pro-
voke sneezing (Chapter XXVII), and so forth.
Like Arculanus, Strobelberger makes a distinction between the rial
and the false cure of odontalgia {cura vera et cura uiendoso). This
latter he also subdivides in palliative cure and vani cure (Chapter LV).
The palliative cure is constituted bv the use ot narcotics and stupef\ing
remedies (^Chapter LVI), whilst the vain cure is represented b\ certain
remedies which he calls "fanatical" or rather "fantastical." The vain
cure, in its turn, undergoes a new" distinction, since it comprises three
species of remedies, that is, the wearing of amulets, the superstitious
remedies, and the ridiculous remedies. Indeed, this last apellation might
also fittingly be applied to the preceding ones!
One would be inclined to believe that the author who qualifies these
remedies as vain, fantastic, superstitious, and ridiculous was a thoroughly
unprejudiced man; however, this is not so. Strobelberger, too, had to
pay his tribute to the dominating prejudices of his century; this mani-
festly appears from various passages in his book, and especially from the
Chapters XVI and XLIV. The first of these bears the following title:
"How to procure immunit\- from toothache," and Strobelberger therein
asserts in all seriousness, basing his assertion on the authority of Rhazes,
that "if the canine tooth of a lion be suspended to a child's neck before
the milk teeth fall out and during the eruption of the second teeth, it
will secure the child immunity from dental pains." In Chapter XLIV
the author speaks of those animals whose teeth are useful to man as
remedies against toothache, and reiterates—lending, as it seems, perfect
faith thereto—various prejudices that are found in Pliny and other
writers of antiquity.
As to the remedies which Strobelberger recognizes as vani—that is,
as devoid of real curative virtue—he remarks that they may nevertheless
be useful by acting powerfully on the imagination of the sufferer, thus
causing, in fact, the cessation of pain (Chapter LVII). This clear and
explicit affirmation of the efficacy of suggestion in a book published 270
years ago is certainly not w'ithout interest.
If, says Strobelberger, a place is to be accorded, in dental therapeutics,
to the vain remedies, among these, amulets deserve the preference; and
the best accredited amulet is the root of the lepidium, already recom-
mended by Dioscorides, who affirms that if it be hung around the neck
of the sufferer it will cause the pain to cease.
One of the superstitious remedies to be used aganst this affection
(Chapter LVIII), consists in touching the aching tooth with the tooth
of a dead person, and afterward greasing it with horse's marrow.