In Book XXXI, Pliny speaks of various waters—mineral, thermal, etc.—especially from the medical point of view. It was already known in those days that those waters were most active agents. And in this respect a fact which the author relates in Chapter VI of Book XXV is worth mentioning:
“When Caesar Germanicus moved his camp beyond the Rhine, there was found, in the whole maritime tract of the country, only one spring of fresh water, the drinking of which, within two years, produced the fall of teeth and a loosening of the knee-joints. The doctors called these evils stomacace and scelotyrbe.”
Sea salt and nitre are of use, according to Pliny, against various maladies of the teeth and mouth. He counsels the application of salt on lint to the ulcers of the oral cavity, and to rub it on the gums when they are swollen. To prevent diseases of the teeth, it would be advantageous, every morning before breaking one’s fast, to keep a little salt under the tongue until it is dissolved. Against the pain of the teeth it would be beneficial to use common salt dissolved in vinegar, or nitre in wine.
“The rubbing of the blackened teeth with burnt nitre gives them back their natural color.”[147]
The prophylactic remedies against odontalgia believed in, at that period, were sufficiently numerous, and, among many other such things, Pliny informs us that in order not to be subject to toothache, it is sufficient to wash the mouth three times a year with the blood of the tortoise.[148] Analogous virtue was also attributed to the brain of the shark, which was boiled in oil, and this put by for washing the teeth with once a year.
Besides the many anti-odontalgic remedies so far related, several others are found enumerated in Chapter XXVI of Book XXXII:
“The pain in the teeth is lessened by picking the gums with the bones of the sea dragon. It is also very beneficial to pick the gums with the sharp bone of the puffin.[149] If the same be pounded together with white hellebore, and the mixture thus obtained be rubbed on the diseased teeth, they may be made to fall out without pain. The ashes, also, of salt fish burnt in an earthen vase, with the addition of powdered marble, is a remedy against toothache. Frogs are also boiled in a hemina[150] of vinegar, the decoction being then used to wash the teeth with; but this, however, must be kept in the mouth for some length of time. In order to render this remedy less nauseous, Sallustius Dionisius used to hang several frogs, by their hind feet, over a vase in which he boiled the vinegar, so that the juices of the animals might drip into this from their mouths. To make loose teeth firm, some advise the soaking of two frogs, after having cut off their feet, in a hemina of wine, and the washing of the mouth with the latter. Others tie them, whole, on the jaws. Some, to strengthen unsteady teeth, rinse them with a decoction made by boiling ten frogs in three sextaries[151] of vinegar, until the liquor is reduced to one-third. By others, thirty-six hearts of frogs are well boiled in a sextary of old oil, in a copper vessel, and the oil is then used against toothache, dropping it into the ear, on the side of the pain. Some, after having boiled the liver of a frog, pound it with honey, and smear it on the sore teeth. If the teeth are decayed and fetid, many counsel the drying of a hundred frogs in an oven, leaving them there for one night, then the addition of an equal weight of salt, reducing the whole to powder, and rubbing the teeth with it. In such cases the ashes of crabs are also used. That of the murex[152] is adopted as a simple dentifrice.”
“The cutting of teeth is facilitated by rubbing the gums of the child with the ashes of dolphin’s teeth mixed with honey, or even simply by touching the gums with a tooth of this animal.”[153]
In Chapter XXXIV of Book XXXVI it is said that the decoction of gagates[154] in wine cures the diseases of the teeth; and in Chapter XLII of the same book are praised the dentifrice powders made of pumice stone.
From the examination of Pliny’s work several important facts come out.