Page 392 - dimkoutroumpas

 SUMMARY  vocabulary wealth, proving that Latin dentistry was frustratingly limited, covering only the basic. Besides the scholars – "scientists" doctors, dentistry was exercised by doctors qualified in dentistry the so-called dentales medicos, surgeons, but also maybe a plethora of other professionals such as folk healers and possibly pharmacists, beauticians, barbers etc. The most significant, however, is the practice of dentistry by dental practitioners as individual specialization of medicine, especially in the large urban centers of the ancient world as in Rome and Alexandria. The dental practitioner should deal exclusively with disorders of the teeth and use corresponding therapies and treatments. It is unlikely that he dealt with other diseases of the oral cavity than those of the teeth and the surrounding gums. The dental practitioner, the ancient dentist, initially used a plethora of pharmaceutical preparations for treatment of dental diseases. The vast majority (73.17%) was indicated for the cure of dental pain. The next largest category is pharmaceutical prescriptions for addressing tooth mobility (8.78%). The remaining categories contain few medications such as for aching gums (2.43%). The medicaments prescribed by the ancient dentist were administered as lotions for washing out, drops, remedies for external application, plasters, patches or poultices, unguents or ointments, chewable remedies, gargles, fumigations, vapor-baths, ear drops and nose drops, and cautery. Choosing the preferred medicine depended on the disease that was to be cured, by consulting books like Dioscorides Materia Medica, Galen’s treatise On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs, especially books Ζ΄ to Λ΄, in which the Galen records alphabetically simple substances with pharmaceutical use and therefor dental use. It is more likely that the ancient dentist studied specific parts of the treatises of pharmacologists, since all of them were dealing systematically with the diseases of teeth and oral cavity. For example, in books Ε΄ and Ζ΄ of the treatise ‘On the composition of medicines according to places,’ Galen records regimens for the treatment of dental and oral diseases respectively. Still, 378