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THE GREEKS

Serre' observes, not without reason, that if a tooth he so unsteacl\ as
to be able to be extracted with leaden pincers, this may just as well
be done, and perhaps even better, by pinching the tooth between the
fingers, no other aid being required than a handkerchief to prevent them
from slipping. Avulsive pincers of lead would be, therefore, a nearly
useless invention; so it is much more probable, as Serre remarks, that
the original pincers were of iron, and that the inventor, reserving these
for his own use, made a simple model of the same in lead (this being
easier to do) and deposited it in the temple of Apollo, in order to make
known the form of the instrument to contemporaries and to posterity,
naturally supposing that whoever wished to copy it would understand
of himself, or learn from the priests, that it was to be made of iron and
not of lead.
Fig.
7

-^^
*v.
\r'jf~-

Portrayal of a dental operation on a vase of Phoenician origin, found in Crimea (see
Cigrand, Rise, Fall, and Revival of Dental Prosthesis, pp. 60-63 and 287).

Hippocrates. The sacerdotal and philosophical schools of medicine,
as well as the gymnasiums, were the three great sources whence Hip-
pocrates derived his first knowledge of medicine.
Hippocrates was born in the island of Cos, toward the year 460 B.C.
He belonged to the sacerdotal caste of the Asklepiadi, and was, according
to some of his earliest biographers, the nineteenth descendant of ^^scu-
lapius on his father's side, and the twentieth descendant of Hercules on
his mother's side. The time of his death is even still more uncertain

' Praktische Darstellung aller Operationen der Zahnarznei-kiinst, von Johann Jakob
Joseph Serre, Berlin, pp. 7 to 13.