[9] “Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery down to the Sixteenth Century.” London, 1904.
[10] The subsequent disuse of anæthesia seems an almost impossible mystery to many, but the practically total oblivion into which the practice fell is incomprehensible. This is emphasized by the fact that while it dropped out of medical tradition, the memory of it remained among the poets, and especially among the dramatists. Shakespeare used the tradition in “Romeo and Juliet.” Tom Middleton, in the tragedy of “Women Beware Women” (Act IV., Scene i., 1605), says:
“I’ll imitate the pities of old surgeons
To this lost limb, who, ere they show their art,
Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part.”
[11] “Physicke is so studied and practised with the Egyptians that every disease hath his several physicians, who striveth to excell in healing that one disease and not to be expert in curing many. Whereof it cometh that every corner of that country is full of physicians. Some for the eyes, others for the head, many for the teeth, not a few for the stomach and the inwards.”
[12] The Ebers Papyrus shows that special attention was paid to diseases of the eyes, the nose, and throat, and we have traditions of operations upon these from very early times. Conservative surgery of the teeth, and the application of prosthetic dental apparatus, being rather cosmetic than absolutely necessary, might possibly be expected not to have developed until comparatively recent times; but apart from the traditions in Egypt with regard to this speciality, which are rather dubious, we have abundant evidence of the definite development of dentistry from the long ago. The old Etruscans evidently paid considerable attention to prosthetic dentistry, for we have specimens from the Etruscan tombs which show that they did bridge work in gold, supplied artificial teeth, and used many forms of dental apparatus. At Rome the Laws of the Twelve Tables (circa 450 B.C.) forbade the burying of gold with a corpse except such as was fastened to the teeth, showing that the employment of gold in the mouth for dental repair must have been rather common. We have specimens of gold caps for teeth from the early Roman period; and there is even a well-confirmed tradition of the transplantation of teeth, a practice which seems to have been taken up again in the later Middle Ages, and then allowed to lapse once more until our own time.
[13] Dr. Petells, discussing this use of livers (Janus, 1898), says that there has been some tendency to revert to the idea of biliary principles as of value in external eye diseases.
[14] “Gesammelte Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Oeffentliche Medizin,” Hirschwald, Berlin, 1877.
[15] See Walsh, “The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries,” New York, seventh edition, 1914.
[16] Burdett, “Hospitals and Asylums of the World.”
[17] London, 1909.