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222 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES

Among the ridiculous remedies (Chapter LIX), the author describes
one that was especially in use among soldiers. With a piece of chalk
or of rubble one writes on a table:
Chiacia
Chiacia
Chiacia
xox xox xox
One then pricks the tooth with a knife or an iron toothpick until it
bleeds slightly; then thrusting the point of the instrument, to which
the blood adheres, into the first cross, then into the second, then into the
third, and so on, one asks the patient each time if the tooth still pains
him. Before one gets to the last cross the pain ceases! This stolid
cure, says the author, has no other value than that of the scarification
of the part affected.
Strobelberger held, as did many of the preceding authors, that the extrac-
tion ot a tooth ought to be the last remedy, that is, to be had recourse to
when all others, including cauterization, which he considers as the last
but one, have proved ineffectual. There are cases, however, in which
the extraction of a tooth is absolutely indicated, and here, by the way,
the author acquaints us with the following poetic aphorism, which
expressed the unanimous opinion of doctors:

Si dens pertusus, vel putridus esse notatur,
Corrumpens alios, tunc protinus ejiciatur.
That is, if one finds that a tooth is hollow or decayed, and corrupts the
others, it must at once be extracted.
Strobelberger, like the greater number of his predecessors, is fully
persuaded that diseased teeth may be made to fall out by the use of special
remedies; indeed, this clearly appears from the title of the work itself,
as, without doubt, the reader will already have observed. Such remedies
are called by him "odontagoga," and he describes them at great length
in five different chapters (X to XIV) of the second section of his book,
dedicated to the surgical care of the teeth.
In regard to violent extraction of teeth, Strobelberger shows still greater
cautiousness and timidity than Celsus or Abulcasis. He requires that,
after the gum has been detached, one should endeavor to extract the
tooth with the fingers or by means of a thread; if, however, this does not
succeed, one may have recourse to the trifid lever; only at last, that is,
when even the lever has failed, does he allow the use of an appropriate
dental forceps.
Arnauld Gillhs, a Frenchman, in the year 1622, published in Paris
a work whose curious title we will here note: The flower of the remedies
against toothache.^ We know nothing else about this publication,

' Arnauld (Jillis, i>a tliur dis icnu-des contre Ic mal dcs dents, Paris, 1622.