2. Evacuate or dissipate the morbid humors; this may be effected by various means, namely, by purgatives, by bleeding, by gingival scarification, by the application of leeches on the site of the pain, by cupping on the back of the neck, or on the shoulders.
3. Applying in each single case the medicaments best adapted for calming the pain.
The author here goes through a long enumeration of anti-odontalgic remedies that offer no particular interest, as they are not at all new.
When a decayed tooth becomes the seat of excessive pain, and this does not yield to any remedy, one must either have recourse to extraction or cauterize it; this can be done either with potential caustics—such as oil of vitriol, aqua fortis—or with the actual cautery. By cauterizing, Paré adds, one burns the nerve, thus rendering it incapable of again feeling or causing pain.
Erosion or caries[304] is the effect of an acute and acrid humor, that corrodes and perforates the teeth, often to their very roots. To combat this morbid condition, even when it is not accompanied by pain, one must also have recourse (besides general treatment) to cauterization either with oil of vitriol, with aqua fortis, or with a small actual cautery.
If, as often happens, that the seat of the erosion lies in such a manner between two teeth as to make it impossible to apply caustics or other medicaments, one must file just sufficiently between the healthy and the corroded tooth to render the part accessible, taking care, however, to file more on the side of the affected tooth than on that of the healthy one.
The file may be used, besides, to plane down a tooth that stands out above the level of the others, and for similar purposes.
If one or more teeth have been shaken by a blow or a fall, or have come out of their alveoli altogether, the surgeon should not remove them, but rather reduce them and bind to the neighboring teeth, that they may entirely reacquire their original firmness.
In allusion to this subject, Ambroise Paré refers to the case of a friend of his, who having sustained, through a blow from the hilt of a dagger, a fracture of the lower jaw with almost complete expulsion of three teeth from their alveoli, had the fracture reduced by him; after replacing the teeth and binding them to the neighboring ones, he prescribed astringent mouth washes and liquid or semiliquid nourishment, such as meat juice, panada, barley soup, jelly, and such like. The patient was completely cured and able to masticate with the three teeth as well as before.
Also in the case of extraction of a healthy instead of a diseased tooth, Paré recommends replacing it immediately and binding it to the neighboring ones, for, he says, by this means the tooth can take root again.