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THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURV 247

He savs the file ma\- be used without causing the shghtest harm, if one
takes care not to approach the inner cavity of the tooth too nearh', and
above all not to penetrate right to it, which would give rise to intolerable
pain. Such an accident, he adds, nia\- happen much more easil\- when,
instead of using the hie, whole pieces of teeth are removed with the
excising forceps.
This author acquaints us with a tooth powder, much used in his time,
especially bv Parisian ladies. The ingredients were powdered cuttle
fish, coral powder, cream of tartar, Armenian bole, and powder of
red roses.
At that time artificial teeth were generally made of ivory; Nuck, how-
ever, observes that it soon becomes yellow by the action of food and
drink, and of the saliva itself. He therefore recommends, instead, the
use of hippopotamus' tusks, giving the preference to the whitest. Ac-
cording to Nuck, artificial teeth made of hippopotamus' tusks would be
capable of preserving their color even for sevent\' \ears. In the case of
all the teeth of the lower jaw being wanting, the entire dental arch ought
to be framed in with a single piece of ivory or tusk of hippopotamus.^
Carlo Musitano, a celebrated Neapolitan doctor (1635 ^o i7H)-
According to Carlo Musitano, the real cause of toothache consists in
the irritant action of saline or acid particles on the extremeh thin mem-
brane that lines the alveoli or on the exquisiteh" sensitive nerves of the
teeth. As he believes, these particles have an angular form, sometunes
pointed or even hooked, and they reach the sensitive parts either directly
from the outside, through the air, the food or drink (especially when the
teeth are already decayed), or else through the blood and other humors,
which often, by reason of their deteriorated quality, contain great quan-
tities of such irritant particles.
Among the various influences which ma\' be conducive to toothache,
atmospheric conditions ought also to be included; thus, says the author,
the inhabitants of the Baltic littorals, and other northern peoples, are very
subject to toothache, for the reason that in those regions the air contains,
in abundance, saline particles of various kinds which penetrate into the
organism by the act of respiration. It is said, on the contrary, that in
Egypt, where the air is remarkabh mild, the teeth are not subject either
to pain or to decay.
Musitano, too, believes in worms in the teeth, but does not admit,
as preceding authors had done, that they generate spontaneously. He
holds instead that they result from the eggs of flies and other insects,
which, together with food, are introduced into the carious cavities and
there develop by the heat of the mouth.

' Antonii Nuck operationes et experimenta chirurgica, Lugduni Batavorum, 1692.