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THE EIGHTEKNTII CENTi'R)' 277

weak, whilst the roots of the deciduous teeth are sometimes firmer and
more soHd than one would heheve, and hence it is that in extracting a
milk tooth one runs the risk of injuring the aheokis and e\en ot carr\inj»;
away a portion ot it altogetlicr with tlic tooth, not to speak ot the dangir
of damaging or e\en destro\mg the germ of the j")ermanenr tooth l\ ing
below. Besides, Fauchard adds, there are sometimes deciduous teeth
that are never shed and never renewed. One must, therefore, defer
drawing children's teeth as long as possible unless they are loose. When,
however, intolerance of pain or a caries endangering the integrit\ of
the neighboring teeth oblige one to recur without delay to extraction, one
should carry out the operation with prudence and judgment, so as to
avoid the dangers alluded to. It sometimes happens, sa\s Fauchard,
that one finds in children a crooked tooth bv the side of a straight one;
m these cases ignorant tooth drawers have often been known to remove
the crooked (permanent) tooth, and to leave the straight, vi/., the decidu-
ous one, which afterward falls of itself, the individual thus remaining
deprived of one of his teeth for the rest of his life. The rule to be observed
in order to avoid a similar error is alvva}s to extract the older of the two
teeth and to leave the one that has been cut more recenth', which is easily
recognized by its being ordinarily firmer in the socket and of a better color
than the first.
And here the author inveighs against all the charlatans of his day who
dared, without being dentists, to perform dental operations, and whose
number, it would seem, was ever increasing, so much so that he is led
to exclaim: "There will shortly be more dentists than persons affected
with dental diseases!" In proof of this he relates the case of a cutler of
Paris, who extracted the molar tooth of a young girl because black spots
having appeared on it, he believed it to be decayed; but perceiving
that he had only removed the crown (it was a deciduous tooth about to
fall out), and thinking that he had broken the tooth, proceeded to extract
the root, removing, in his gross ignorance, the permanent tooth on the
point of coming through.
Returning to the indications for the extraction of teeth, Fauchard sa\s
that when a tooth planted irregularly in the mouth cannot be straightened
by any of those means to which he afterward alludes, and occasions
damage or inconvenience or constitutes a deformity, the sole remedy is
its removal. As to decaved teeth and the pain that the\- produce, when
the evil cannot be remedied with oil of cinnamon or oil of cknes, with the
actual cautery, or by stopping, one must have recourse to extraction, and
this to satisfy four different indications, that is, before all, to procure the
cessation of violent pain; in the second place, to prevent the caries from
being communicated to the neighboring teeth; thirdly, to remove the
fetid smell deriving from the substances that are retained within the