In the case of parulides, to soothe the pain and to accelerate the suppurative process, emollient substances should be used; afterward it is necessary to open the abscess with a lancet, to wash the mouth with mulse, and to aid the process of cicatrization by using syrup of roses.
As to epulides, these must be made to disappear, by sprinkling the tumor with the powder of gall-nuts, or by moistening them frequently with a decoction of gall-nuts, or with sulphur water. But if they do not yield to these remedies, and are the cause of functional disturbances, the surest and most prudent method of cure would be the use of the red-hot iron.
Giovanni Andrea Della Croce, a celebrated Venetian physician and surgeon, was the author of a most valuable treatise on surgery, which was published first in Latin (Chirurgiæ universalis opus absolutum, Venetitiis, 1573), and then in Italian under the title of Chirurgia universale e perfetta, Venezia, 1583. According to this author, dental fistulæ are more common to the lower jaw than to the upper one. To cure these fistulæ, it is necessary to extract the diseased teeth from which they originate, even should they ache but little or not at all. To confirm this, he relates in full a very interesting case of a dental fistula, that he cured by the extraction of a tooth which hardly ached at all.
Flajani[314] chose to see in this case a precocious example of the opening of Highmore’s antrum through the alveolus. But the description given by Andrea della Croce of his case does not at all warrant this supposition.
At the end of his book Andrea della Croce gives us the figures of many dental instruments, which have, however, nothing new about them.
Gerolamo Capivacci, of Padua, repeats the advice (already given by preceding authors) to avoid, in eating and drinking, the rapid changes from heat to cold, and vice versa, since, says he, nature does not tolerate these rough changes.[315] In the mercurial treatment of syphilis,[316] he recommends the patient, as soon as the action of the remedy manifests itself in the oral cavity, to keep a piece of gold in his mouth, that the mercury, on account of its particular affinity, may unite with the gold and the harmful effects of this strange remedy on the mouth may be thus avoided. A strange method of curing mercurial stomatitis!
Johann Schenck von Grafenberg (1530 to 1598), a celebrated doctor of Freyburg-in-Breisgau, has left us, in his Observationes medicæ, a very rich and interesting collection of clinical cases. In this work he refers to many observations upon dental diseases by earlier authors, which, however, have already been noted by us in their time and place. Among other things, Schenck von Grafenberg relates that Cardanus was able, more than twenty times, to calm a violent toothache which tormented him by lightly pressing the sick tooth between the thumb and index finger of his left hand.
Peter Foreest (1522 to 1597), a very famous Dutch doctor of Alkmaar, repeats the very old error—already in decisive terms denied by Andreas Vesalius—that women have only twenty-eight teeth, whilst men usually have thirty-two. To the two central incisors he gives the name of columellares. Sugar and all sweet things, says this author, are very harmful to the teeth, and he gives as a proof the fact that apothecaries have, in general, very bad teeth, on account of the frequency with which they taste syrups and the like. Perhaps things are now changed, since I am not aware that chemists in our days are to be distinguished by the bad state of their teeth!
In regard to toothache, Foreest records an important observation which he had made on himself; an aching tooth which a surgeon had not succeeded in extracting, but which was simply loosened, ceased, without anything else being done, from giving him pain, and in a short while became firm again, and he continued to use this tooth for about five years. However, on a renewal of the pain he was obliged at last to have it extracted. On the strength of this observation, the author believes that in certain appropriate cases, recourse may be had to the luxation of a tooth, rather than to its extraction to obtain a cessation of toothache.
This method of cure had already been advised by a still earlier writer, that is, by Avicenna. When a subluxation produces the rupture of the dental nerve, this, in its results is equivalent to a replantation.