Page 393 - dimkoutroumpas

 SUMMARY  it is more likely that he used more practical pharmacological textbooks as the illegitimate work of Dioscorides ‘On simple drugs’ (also known as Euporista) or others with similar structure where the recommended drugs were recorded according to dental or oral disease. If the pharmaceutical treatment failed then an invasive treatment method was selected and as the last resource the tooth extraction. The cause of the reluctance to perform tooth extractions lies in the fact that there was high risk of death for the patient in such a case. Great doctors like Herophilos and Heraclides of Tarentum reported cases of deaths of patients who passed away after tooth extraction using forceps. Tooth loss emerged the need of artificial dental restorations. In ancient world two types of dental prostheses are found: wire (Eastern Mediterranean) and foil (Etruria). In total, 8 dental prostheses are detected which were constructed using the wire technique and 21 were manufactured using the foil technique. The National Archeological Museum of Athens is unique in the world as it has in its collections specimens of both types of dental prosthesis: gold wire and gold foil. Although the use of artificial dental prostheses is given in antiquity there are no matching references in any medical treatise. We should assume that the prosthetic constructions were not counteracting the scholarly medical, but was a matter for specialized technicians who had more knowledge of gold crafting rather than dentistry. Regardless of the absence of references to dental prosthetic constructions, ancient Greek dentistry and its healers are the foundations for the establishment of Western dental tradition. Despite any faults, it remains a shining edifice which has remained unchanged for more than 15 centuries. 379