Among the ridiculous remedies (Chapter LIX), the author describes one that was especially in use among soldiers. With a piece of chalk or of rubble one writes on a table:
| Chiacia | Chiacia | Chiacia |
| X O X | X O X | X O X |
One then pricks the tooth with a knife or an iron toothpick until it bleeds slightly; then thrusting the point of the instrument, to which the blood adheres, into the first cross, then into the second, then into the third, and so on, one asks the patient each time if the tooth still pains him. Before one gets to the last cross the pain ceases! This stolid cure, says the author, has no other value than that of the scarification of the part affected.
Strobelberger held, as did many of the preceding authors, that the extraction of a tooth ought to be the last remedy, that is, to be had recourse to when all others, including cauterization, which he considers as the last but one, have proved ineffectual. There are cases, however, in which the extraction of a tooth is absolutely indicated, and here, by the way, the author acquaints us with the following poetic aphorism, which expressed the unanimous opinion of doctors:
Si dens pertusus, vel putridus esse notatur,
Corrumpens alios, tunc protinus ejiciatur.
That is, if one finds that a tooth is hollow or decayed, and corrupts the others, it must at once be extracted.
Strobelberger, like the greater number of his predecessors, is fully persuaded that diseased teeth may be made to fall out by the use of special remedies; indeed, this clearly appears from the title of the work itself, as, without doubt, the reader will already have observed. Such remedies are called by him “odontagoga,” and he describes them at great length in five different chapters (X to XIV) of the second section of his book, dedicated to the surgical care of the teeth.
In regard to violent extraction of teeth, Strobelberger shows still greater cautiousness and timidity than Celsus or Abulcasis. He requires that, after the gum has been detached, one should endeavor to extract the tooth with the fingers or by means of a thread; if, however, this does not succeed, one may have recourse to the trifid lever; only at last, that is, when even the lever has failed, does he allow the use of an appropriate dental forceps.