Philip Pfaff, dentist to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was the first among the Germans who wrote a real treatise on dentistry. His book[481] contains, in 184 succinctly but well-written pages, the anatomical and physiological notions relative to the teeth, as well as all that belongs to dental pathology, therapy, and prosthesis.
Besides a few observations about supernumerary teeth, Pfaff relates several cases in which the incisors, inferior as well as superior, were renewed (twice consecutively), that is, once at the usual epoch, and the second time between the seventh and thirteenth years. He also cites from the anatomical tables of Kulmus the following epitaph in low Latin, that seems to allude to a case of third dentition:
“Decanus in Kirchberg, sine dente canus, ut anus
Interum dentescit, ter juvenescit, his requiescit.”
In cases of hemorrhage ensuing on the extraction of teeth, the best hemostatic, according to Pfaff, is essence of turpentine, a remedy which in these cases he had always found efficient. He introduced a little ball of lint bathed in this essence as deeply as possible into the alveolus, applying upon it some blotting paper reduced to pulp or some dry lint that the patient compressed tightly by closing his teeth.
Gingival abscesses as well as fistulæ of the maxillary region almost always owe their origin, says Pfaff, to decayed teeth, and can, therefore, in general, not be cured except by the extraction of these teeth.
The prosthetic methods described by this author are, for the most part, identical with those of Fauchard and the other French dentists already mentioned. As to the materials used for prosthesis at different periods, Pfaff mentions, besides ivory, bone, hippopotamus tusk, teeth of sea cow, and human teeth, also teeth made of silver, of mother of pearl, and even of copper enamelled.
The chief merit one must concede to Philip Pfaff is that of having been the first to make use of plaster models. It is, therefore, to two Germans—Pfaff and Purmann, the latter who, as we have already seen, used wax models—that one of the greatest progressive movements in dental prosthesis is indebted, that is, the method of taking casts and making models, of which method one finds no trace whatever in the authors of antiquity, and which, it would appear, was not known even to Fauchard himself. The wax casts of an entire jaw were taken by Pfaff in two pieces, one of the right half of the jaw, and the other of the left; which were then reunited, and one thus avoided spoiling the cast in removing it from the mouth.
Another great merit of Philip Pfaff is that of having first carried out the capping of an exposed dental pulp, previous to stopping a tooth.
Notwithstanding this, Pfaff is not the first who, as Geist-Jacobi is inclined to believe,[482] had dared to apply a filling over an exposed dental pulp without first cauterizing it. As we have already seen, Fauchard did not hesitate in the least to fill a tooth when the dental pulp had become exposed in scraping the carious cavity. But the French dentist carried out, with much delicacy, a simple filling, whilst Pfaff first capped the dental nerve.