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THE SEFENTEENTH CENTiRV 2:^1

to the great importance of taking assiduous care to keep the teeth clean,
and advises that after each meal rhe residues of food he removed from
the interstices of the teeth and rhe mouth well rinst-d with wine.'
NicoLAUS 'I'uLP, in Latin, Tulpius (1593 to 1674), a distinguished
physician and anatomist of Amsterdam, contradicts the then prevailing
opinion among doctors, that is, that the cure of dental affections and the
operations relating thereto were matters to be held in little account.
He observes that diseases of the teeth ma\- give rise to the most serious
consequences, which can even be the cause of death, and are, therefore,
worth\' of being taken into e(juall\ serious consideration as all the other
diseases of the several parts of the human body.
This author relates a clinical case tending to demonstrate how incisions
made in the gums, advised in the first place bv Vesalius, in order to
facilitate the erupting of the last molar, are not always exempt from
danger. A \oung doctor of Amsterdam, b\' name Goswin Hall, being
tormented by insupportable pain caused by the difficult eruption of a
wisdom tooth, had the gum lanced above it. But the pain, instead of
diminishing, became worse; fever and delirium supervened, followed b\-
death! (Here, however, we must be allowed to observe that nothing
demonstrates that the real cause of death was the lancing of the gum,
or that without this the case would have had a different termination.
An event can occur after another and yet be quite independent of the
former and result from quite different causes.)
Among the cases cited h\ Tulp, the following is also worthy of mention.
He relates having arrested a violent and persistent attack of hemorrhage,
which came on after the extraction of a tooth, by apphing and compress-
ing a piece of sponge inside the alveolus."
The belief that dental caries and toothache could be caused by worms
was, at that time, still in full vigor, and it gained still greater force by-
reason of observations recorded by different scientists, whose affirmations
could with difficulty be doubted, for at that period the greater number
still swore blindly in verba rnagistri.
Oligerus JACOBAENS (1650 to 1701), a Danish physician and anato-
mist, who taught in the University of Copenhagen, declared that in scraping
the decayed cavity of a tooth that was the cause of violent pain, he had
seen a worm come forth, which, having been put into water, -moved about
in it for a long time.
Martin Six, having split some decayed teeth a short time after they
had been extracted, asserts that he determined the existence of worms in

' Lazari Riverii, opera medica omnia, Genevje, 1737; Praxeos medicae liber sextus, cap. i;
De dolore dentium, cap. ii; De dentium nigredine et erosione.
- Nicolai Tulpii, Amstelodamensis, Osservationes medicae, Amstelodami, 1685, lib. i,
cap. xxxvi, p. 68; cap. xli\, p. go.