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224 THIRD PERIOD-MODERN TIMES

every case of neuralgia occurring within the region influenced by the tri-
facial nerve one should give particular attention to the state of the teeth
and carefully treat every affection of the same. Notwithstanding—we
say it with regret—there are still medical men who ignore or neglect
this precept, and prescribe internal remedies or have recourse to injections
of morphine when they ought, in the first place, to call in the aid of a
dentist. How many patients would have been delivered from slow
martyrdom if the example of the clear-seeing physician of Berne had
been followed from his days up to the present time!
Fabricius Hildanus relates, besides, many cases of dental fistula,
cured by him through the extraction of roots or of decayed teeth. In
one such case the fistula dated from fourteen years back. Fabricius
Hildanus, contrary to the opinion of many other doctors, extracted a
decayed tooth, and by this operation obtained, in a brief period of time,
the complete recovery of the patient.
Among the many very important clinical cases cited by Fabricius
Hildanus, the following deserves to be recorded: In the year 1590 a
woman presented herself to him who had a hard tumor in the space behind
the last molar on the right side. The author, after having prepared the
patient for the operation by the methods then in use (that is, by aperient
medicine, by bleeding, and appropriate diet), destroyed the tumor by
the application of escharotic substances. The remaining wound, how-
ever, defying all the cicatrizing remedies which the author had recourse
to, one after the other, by reason of its being continually disturbed by
the movements of the jaws, he then thought of maintaining the dental
arches in a determined position, and this he obtained by means of two
pieces of wood somewhat hollowed out above and below, which he placed on
the right and on the left between the upper and the lower teeth, fixing them
to the teeth themselves by brass wires passing through two openings made
expressly in each of the two pieces of wood. In this way he succeeded
in obtaining the absolute immobility of the jaws and the complete cure
of the wound in a few days, during which time the patient was nourished
with liquid food.'
A very interesting case, inasmuch as it demonstrated the damage and
peril which may result from certain absurd means of cure, was reported
to this author by Claudio Deodato, physician to the Prince-Bishop of
Basle. The case was that of a patient who, after having tried in vain
a great number of remedies for a stubborn toothache, finally had
recourse to the use of aqua fortis; but this substance, which in those days
was in frequent use for dental caries and for toothache, produced most

' (luillulini Kahritii Ililandi opt-ra omnia, Francofurti ad Moenuni, 1646, Centuria I
observatio xxxviii, p. ^^.