A History of Dentistry from the most Ancient Times until the end of the Eighteenth Century

by Vincenzo Guerini

A plate from Schultes’ “Armamentarium chirurgicum,” showing several dental instruments.

Marco Aurelio Severino (1580 to 1656), of Tarsia, a celebrated professor of surgery in the Neapolitan University, had a great predilection for the use of the cauterizing iron, which he also used very frequently in curing caries and other dental diseases. At times, to effect a cessation of violent toothache, he would have recourse to the cauterization of the antihelix! Against flaccidity of the gums and loosening of the teeth he also used cauterization, disapproving the use of astringent substances, as these cannot get so far as the roots of the affected teeth. Severino boasts of having cured by cauterization at least two hundred cases of dental diseases.

Lazare Rivière (1589 to 1655), a professor at the University of Montpelier, also known by his latinized name of Lazarus Riverius, treats of dental affections and their cure, in various parts of his works, considering them, however, almost exclusively from a medical point of view.

He speaks first of all of the different causes of odontalgia, and, among these, does not omit to mention worms. These, he says, may be generated in the carious cavities, owing to the putrefaction of substances retained in their interior. Whenever odontalgia is caused by worms, the pain, says Rivière, is not continuous, but ceases and returns at brief intervals; besides, the sufferer perceives at times the movement of the worm inside the tooth!

What one reads in the works of this author as to remedies to be used for odontalgia clearly demonstrates how irrationally dental diseases were treated in the seventeenth century and what tortures were inflicted on the patients. In many cases, and especially when the pain was held to be occasioned by “hot humors,” the treatment was begun by bleeding in the arm. The following day an aperient was administered. Afterward, if the pain still persisted, the sufferer was cupped in the region of the scapulæ or of the spine, blisters were applied to the nape of the neck or behind the ears, resinous plasters to the temples; all this without taking into account the remedies which were introduced into the ears, or the various medications or operations performed on the aching part itself, and many other things besides. In fact, in order to cure a toothache, the whole body of the sufferer was seized upon and put to torture, and in the majority of cases they assuredly finished by extracting the diseased tooth! When we reflect on the extraordinary frequency of dental disorders we cannot do less than recognize that the dentists, by the radical change effected in the methods of treatment, have diminished in no small degree the sufferings of humanity!

According to Rivière, the small veins (sic) that nourish the teeth pass through the ear (!); and this would explain how the cessation of a toothache may be obtained by the introduction of certain remedies into the meatus auditorius externus. Relief may be obtained, for instance, by dropping oil of bitter almonds into the ear on the side affected by the pain, or by allowing the vapor of hot vinegar, in which pennyroyal or origanum has been boiled, to penetrate into it. Others, adds the author, pour a little pure vinegar into the ear, which is especially efficacious against “hot fluxions.” When, however, the toothache depends on a “cold fluxion,” it calms the pain wonderfully to drop into the ear a tepid mixture of garlic juice and theriac. The same advantage, says the author, may be obtained by introducing a piece of garlic, peeled and cut into the form of a suppository, into the ear.

The author also makes a lengthy enumeration of anodyne and narcotic remedies (among which opium), observing, however, that those remedies, unless the vehemence of the pain obliges the use of them, ought not to have the preference, it being much more rational and much more advantageous to institute a cure which aims directly at the cause itself of the pain (fluxions, worms, etc.).

He informs us that Amatus Lusitanus, a celebrated physician of the sixteenth century, extolled, as a remedy for toothache, a decoction of gum sandarach in wine and vinegar; the said decoction was to be made with an ounce of sandarach in six ounces of wine and the same quantity of vinegar, and ought to be kept in the mouth some length of time, whilst hot.

Rivière further speaks of various masticatories, which were composed of mastich, staphisagria, pyrethrum, henbane, etc.

He also mentions oil of cloves, which even then was used against toothache, by introducing into carious cavities a small piece of cotton-wool soaked in it. Oil of camphor was used in the same manner, but the most efficacious of all, according to the author, was oil of boxwood.