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236 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES

Discoursing of the genesis of the teeth, Fredericus says that " even-
tooth is at first enclosed within a foUicle, that is, in a frail, skin-like
membrane, in the same manner as the grain in the wheat-ear." Taking
this comparison as his point of departure,^ he gives to dentition the name
germination.
This author says that the teeth of the Ethiopians and of the Indians
are generally whiter than those of the northern peoples, but that those
of the Indians soon lose their primitive whiteness by reason of the widely
diffused habit of chewing betel-nuts.
Fredericus refers to an experiment which, according to him, demon-
strates the "sympathetic relations" between the teeth and the ear (whilst
in reality it only proves the facility with which sounds may be transmitted
through solid bodies). "If, by night," says he, "one holds tightly
between one's teeth the end of a stick, stuck upright in the ground,
one hears the footsteps of a person approaching from afar much more
easily."
Through the researches of three great men, Marcello Malpighi,
Friedrich Ruysch, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoeck, an altogether new
science arose in the seventeenth century, viz., histology, or the anatomy
of the tissues, whose revelations contributed not a little to the develop-
ment of modern odontology.
Marcello Malpighi (1628 to 1694), the celebrated Italian anatomist,
was the initiator of microscopic observations on the tissues, and is, there-
fore, justly considered the founder of histology, within the range of which
he made most important discoveries.^
Friederich Ruysch (1638 to 1731), professor at Amsterdam, rendered
his name illustrious particularly by bringing to a high degree of perfection
the processes of anatomical preparations and of embalming.^
His magnificent injections, carried out with a method ot his own
invention, enabled him to trace the most minute vascular ramifications
and to demonstrate the existence of capillary vessels in parts where their
presence had as yet never been suspected.
Ruysch studied accurately the anatomical constitution of the teeth, and
especialh' their vessels. He called attention to the membrane which Imes
the maxillary sinus, and discovered in it a number of bloodvessels.
But in addition to his purely anatomical observations, this author also
merits our consideration from the point of view of pathology. He con-
firmed a most important fact to which allusion had already been made
by preceding authors, that is, the atrophy of the alveolar parietes as

' lotus (kns primuni inclusus est folliculo sen mcmbrana tenui ac pellucida non secus ac
y rami 111 in arista.
Houilkt, Precis d'histoire de la niedecine, p. 221.
-' '' Bouillet, op. cit., p. 222.