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242 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES

holes have been made in the artificial teeth and also in the natural
ones next to them, one applies the artificial teeth in the existing void
and fixes them as neatly as possible with a silver wire by the help of
pincers."^
It would appear that the author is here describing a prosthetic method,
which he had never practised himself; and this results from the fact of
his advising the perforation of the natural teeth for the passage of the silver
wire destined to keep the prosthetic piece in its place. Evidently desiring
to describe the mode practised by the specialists of those days for fixing
artificial teeth, he erroneously imagines that the metal thread was passed
through the holes drilled in the natural teeth; this would have been impos-
sible, first, because of the atrocious pain due to the sensibility of the
dentine and of the dental pulp, and then because of the pathological
consequences to which the perforation of the teeth would have given rise.
We may, therefore, surely hold that Purmann is simply describing, and
not even accurately, a prosthetic method already in use among the
specialists of that period.
On examination of the passage cited above—which, however, is not
so clear as might be desired—it would appear that the models of which
the author speaks were most probably quite different from those in use
now. It is almost certain that the specialists of those days first made a
sketch of the prosthetic part to be constructed, using for the purpose
a piece of wax which they partly modelled with the hand and partly
carved; and after having tried on this model until it fitted perfectly in
the mouth, and was in every way satisfactory, they probably passed
it on to a craftsman to make an exact reproduction of it in bone or
ivory.
In the year 1632 a little book was published in Naples, having for its
title, Nuova et utiltssima prattica dt tiitto qiiello ch' al diligente Bar-
hiero s^ appartiene ; composta per Cintio d^Amato."^ This pamphlet was
reprinted in Venice in 1669, and again in Naples in 1671. We here
make mention of it, not for any special importance which it really has as
regards the development of the dental art, but because of its being most
probably the first hook m the Italian latigiiage in which dental matters
are spoken of independently of general medicine and surgery.
ToMMASO Antonio Riccio. The edition of 1671 was published
under the supervision of Tommaso Antonio Riccio, who was for many
years a disciple of Cintio d'Amato, and who greatly eulogizes his master
and praises his work. He expresses himself in the following bombastic

' Puimann's Wunciai/xnei, Halberstadt, 1684, Part 1, chap, xxxii.
^ New and very useful practice of all that wliicli belongs to the diligent barber; composed
by Cintio d'Amato.