[379] The art of beautifying the human body was comprised by the ancients among the many and various parts of the medical art, under the name of decorative medicine. The barbers considered themselves members of the medical class, as practitioners of decorative medicine and in a certain degree also of surgery.
[380] In a chapter entitled “Of the Excellence and Nobility of the Barber’s Office,” Cintio d’Amato speaks of several barbers of that period, who were in great repute by their writings, or by the high offices with which they were invested, or by honors received from princes and sovereigns. Among the writers, Tiberio Malfi, barber of Montesarchio, deserves mention; he published, in 1626, a book entitled The Barber, written in excellent style, and giving proof of solid literary culture, and of much erudition. This work treats of all that concerns the barber’s art (decorative medicine, bleeding, etc.). In it, however, there is absolutely nothing about the treatment of the teeth or their extraction; and this constitutes a valid confirmation of our own opinion, that is, that the dental art was not at that time in any way in the hands of the barbers.
[381] Portal, vol. iii, p. 618.
[382] Antonii Nuck operationes et experimenta chirurgica, Lugduni Batavorum, 1692.
[383] Caroli Musitani opera omnia, pp. 121 to 128, Venetiis, 1738.
[384] J. Drake, Anthropologia nova, London, 1707.
[385] J. M. Hoffmann, Disquisitiones anatomico-pathologicæ, Altorf, 1713, p. 321.
[386] Probably through the nose.
[387] H. Meibomii de abscessum internorma natura et constitutione discursus. Dresdæ et Lipsiæ, 1718, p. 114. (This edition was published after the author’s death, which took place in 1700.)
[388] St. Yves, Nouveau traité des maladies des yeux, 1722, p. 80.