After having explained (!) in this way the origin of the phenomenon, Horst passes on to examine what events may be portended by this unheard-of marvel, he not having the least doubt that it—like earthquakes, eclipses, and comets—must be the precursory sign of important events. Supporting his assertions by arguments of various kinds, some of which are taken from the Bible, he concludes that the gold tooth of the Silesian child means neither more nor less than the approach of the golden age! The Roman Emperor would sweep the Turks, the enemies of Christianity, out of Europe, and the Millenium or Golden Age would commence. As the tooth was situated on the left side of the lower jaw, it might be deduced, according to Horst, that heavy calamities would precede the beginning of the epoch of happiness thus predicted. On the other hand, as the golden tooth was the last of the dental series of the child, this was to signify that the golden epoch thus foretold would be the last of the ages of this world before the universal judgment!
Martin Ruland, in the same year, 1595, wrote about the gold tooth.[328] Shortly after, he was answered by Johann Ingolstetter; and the controversy which arose between them in this important subject lasted for a long time, without, however, leading to any definite conclusion.
Balthasar Camindus, a doctor of Frankfort, meanwhile had noted that for some months the marvellous Silesian boy had not lent himself to being examined by the learned, becoming terribly enraged whenever they wished to compel him. From this he inferred that it was a case of nothing else but an imposture, and that the famous tooth could not have anything special about it, save that its crown had been very skilfully covered with a thin plate of gold.
In spite of this the discussions on the portentous tooth continued for a long time; and even one hundred years after, that is, in 1695, a new dissertation appeared on the golden tooth.
The greater number of those who wrote on this subject did not throw the slightest doubt upon the reality of the fact, but only sought to explain in the most varied ways the genesis of this phenomenon.
Duncan Liddel. Among those who had the good sense not to put faith in the thing, and who very decidedly affirmed that this was a mere case of imposture, Duncan Liddel, a Scotchman and professor in a German University, deserves to be recorded.[329]
He had heard that the famous gold tooth was larger than the others, and that the neighboring molar was wanting; from which he argued that this was simply the case of a tooth the crown of which had been covered with a plate of gold. Answering the arguments of Horst, he accused him of gross ignorance in the most elementary notions of astronomy, and this for having affirmed that when the famous child was born, that is, December 22, the sun happened to be in conjunction with Saturn in the sign of the Ram. As the sun does not enter the sign of the Ram until March, if it had been there on December 22 this would have been a greater portent than if the whole body of the child had been formed of nothing else but teeth of gold![330]
The above-mentioned fact is not the only one of its kind. Serres relates that once there was a great noise made in Poland about the pretended golden teeth of another child who was carried round from city to city for the purpose of making money. A Franciscan monk had sought to explain, in one of his writings, the formation of these teeth. The anatomist Kircher answered him in a pamphlet which had the very suitable epigraph: O præclare pater, nimium ne crede colori.[331] In fact, the pretended teeth were only covered with a layer of tartar of golden color. As the falsity of the pretended miracle might be brought to light at any moment with much scandal, a bishop thought it well to put an end in haste to the comedy, by ordering the removal of the deceitful layer of tartar from the teeth of the child, to be performed in public, so that the imposture might be made completely clear.
From the above story we can, at any rate, deduce an important conclusion for the history of dental art, that is to say, that even as early as 1593 there was an artificer (we do not know whether a goldsmith or dentist) who knew how to construct a gold crown, although only for the purposes of deception.