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54 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIOUITT ^
depression in the middle of the nose; the falhng out of the upper front teeth
sometimes causes a flattening of the point of the nose. The Hfth teeth
counting irom the front ones had four roots (two of which were almost
united to the two contiguous teeth), the points of which were all turned
inward. Suppurations arising from the third tooth are more frequent
than from any of the others; and the dense discharge from the nose and
pains in the temples are specially owing to it. This tooth is moie apt
to decay than the others ; but the fifth does so, as well. This tooth had
a tubercle in the middle and two in the front; a small tubercle in the
internal part, on the side of the other two, had first begun to decay.
The seventh tooth had only one large, sharp-pointed root. In the
Athenian boy, there was pain in a lower tooth on the left, and in an
upper one on the right. When the pain ceased, there was suppuration
f^ of the right ear."
This last fact—of the suppuration of the ear—is mentioned by Hip-
pocrates not as a simple coincidence, but as a fact intimately connected
with the cessation of the toothache. This may be argued from the general
ideas of Hippocrates in regard to the beginning and the resolution of
diseases. He considers a malady to be produced by a humor, which
becomes localized in a given point of the body. The crisis gives exit
to the peccant humor,' and the mode in which this is evacuated consti-
tutes the critical pheriotuenon; the same may be represented either by
a profuse perspiration, by abundant urine, by diarrhea, by vomiting, by
expectoration, by bleeding or discharge of other humors from the nose,
bv the issuing of pus from the ear, and even by deposits on the teeth."'
If by effect of organic sympathies the morbid humor, instead of bemg
thrown outward, be transported into another region of the body, this
constitutes the so-called metastasis.
The hints just given will serve to render some of the passages which we
quote from the works of Hippocrates more intelligible.
In the fourth book on Epidemics we find among other clinical cases the
following:
"Egesistratus had a suppuration near the eve. An abscess manifested
itself near the last tooth; the eye directly got quite well; there was a
dense discharge of pus from the nostrils; and small, rounded pieces of
flesh were detached from the gums. It seemed as though a suppuration
at the third tooth were going to take place, but it went back; and suddenly
the jaw and the eye swelled up."^
And farther on one reads:

' 1 he various editions lu re offer luimerous variations, hut the sense is everywhere obscure.
- See Bouillet, Precis d'Histoire de la Medecine,
p. 94.
ii, section i, p. 1002.
' On Epidemics, lib.
* De morbis vulgaribus,
lib. iv, p. 1 131.