Page 264 - My FlipBook

248 THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES

The treatment of toothache ought to differ according to its causes.
If the pain be owing to acidity, one uses medicines adapted for tempering
the acids; if it be owing to the action of saline substances, one has recourse
to remedies which dissolve them; if to worms, to such remedies as destroy
them, and so on. Purgatives and bleeding ought, however, never to be
used as remedies against toothache; for, far from doing good, they often
do harm. As to the other torments usually inflicted on poor sufferers,
they are the punishment of their sins, for God often gives the unrighteous
into the hands of doctors ! (This language will perhaps appear less
strange when the reader comes to know that Carlo Musitano was at one
and the same time priest and physician
!)
After a lengthy enumeration of medicaments to be used against tooth-
ache, which we pass over in silence because already known, the author
speaks of two remedies which carry us back absolutely to the days of
Pliny! He relates us a fact experienced by himself, that, by touching
an aching tooth with the leg of a frog completely cleaned of the flesh,
the pain ceases altogether. Also, if the aching tooth be touched with the
root of a tooth extracted from the jaw of a corpse, the pain ceases, the
tooth becomes as cold as ice, and often, after a certain time, it falls to
pieces.
As to worms, the best mode of destroying them is by using bitter sub-
stances, such as mvrrh, aloes, colocynth, centaiirea minor, etc., but some-
times the use of sweet substances, such as honey, is a good means of
drawing them out of the carious cavities!
Musitano also cites a great number of remedies against the setting on
edge of the teeth. Among the best of these he mentions urine applied to
the teeth whilst still warm! Alkali in general, and particularly lye,
such as is used for washing purposes, are good remedies against the
setting on edge of the teeth.
The treatment of loose teeth ought to vary according to whether this
pathological condition depends on old age, or on scurvy, on syphilis,
on superabundance of humors, etc. Sometimes, especialh' in old persons,
it may be useful to bind the teeth with gold wire, in order to prevent their
falling out, but this operation must be very ably performed, otherwise it
may give rise to inflammation.
Relative to artificial teeth, Musitano says that they are made of ivory
or hippopotamus tusks; of these last he does not speak as of a novelty;
we may, therefore, deem it probable that hippopotamus tusks were used
in Naples for making artificial teeth even before the Dutchman Anton
Nuck (contemporary of Musitano) made mention of them in his writings.
In cases of difficult dentition, the best remedy, according to Musitano,
for facilitating the eruption of the teeth consists in friction of the gums,
once, or at ?iiost twice, with blood drawn fresh from the comb of a cock!