CHAPTER IX.
THIRTEENTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.
Bruno of Longobucco. After the Arabian period, the first author whom we must mention is Bruno of Longobucco, of the school of Bologna, who lived in the thirteenth century and wrote a treatise on surgery, which gave him a certain renown.[227] This book, however, contains but little about diseases of the teeth. The author shows himself a great friend of the actual cautery, and advises its use in the cure of dental caries and of various diseases of the gums. He says nothing about the extraction of teeth; instead, he recommends, as a means for making a diseased tooth fall out, that the milky juice of the tithymal be applied around its root after having been reduced to the consistency of paste by the addition of flour.[228]
Lanfranchi, of Milan, another writer of the thirteenth century, who acquired great fame by his book Chirurgia magna et parva—partially translated into German, more than two centuries later, by Otto Brunfels—also shows himself very timid in the sphere of dentistry, and to combat dental pains he recommends, by preference, the use of narcotics. He is not at all favorable to the extraction of teeth; and especially that of the molars is considered by him a very dangerous operation.[229]
Teodorico Borgognoni (1205 to 1298), known also under the name of Teodorico of Cervia, is according to Hæsar the first author who made mention of sialorrhea following mercurial frictions. Worthy of note, too, is what he says in regard to fistulas of the gums, or, in general, of the maxillary region. He advises that in every case of this kind special attention be paid to the state of the dental roots; when there is a discharge of ichorous pus, the roots are certainly affected; and then the diseased teeth must all be extracted as soon as possible.[230]
John Gaddesden, an English doctor who flourished at Oxford in the first half of the fourteenth century, wrote a very curious medical book, taken the greater part from Pliny and the Arabian writers and entitled Rosa anglica: practica medicinæ a capite ad pedes (English rose: the practice of medicine from head to foot). In his time many strange methods of cure were in use, sometimes simply ridiculous, and others even filthy; and the Rosa anglica furnishes us with not few examples. In order to make a tooth fall, Gaddesden advises the application of dried crow’s dung reduced to powder, or else to anoint it with the fat of a green frog. This last means would be quite infallible and would make the tooth fall out on the spot. It had such power that if peradventure an ox in grazing chews a little frog with the grass, its teeth will all fall out on the instant! We do not know whether the author himself believed in the marvellous virtues of the fat of green frogs. It is certain, however, that he enumerates this among his “secrets,” and says that he has gained much money from it through the mediation of the barbers.
Other absurdities of the same kind are the following: The brain of the hare can, by being rubbed on the gums and jaws, serve for two important purposes, since it has not only the virtue of facilitating dentition, but also of making teeth grow again to those who have lost them! The brain of a partridge applied to a carious tooth makes it fall in pieces!
The treatment of odontalgia embraces, according to Gaddesden, both general and special means of cure. To the former belong purgatives, bloodletting, scarifications of the labial and sublingual mucous membrane, leeches, the application of scarified cuppings under the chin. The special means of cure are represented by a great number of plasters, powders, and ointments, in the composition of which almost constantly hyoscyamus and pyrethrum take part. When odontalgia depends on caries, the author advises, among other things, the use of a red-hot iron. Against the supposed worms of carious teeth he counsels fumigations with the burnt seeds of hyoscyamus or of leeks. In cases of dental fistulas, it is necessary to cauterize the fistulous tract, to extract the diseased tooth, and if the bone be also affected, to scrape it. To clean the teeth: Gaddesden recommends several dentifrices; some of which are composed of pulverized cuttle bone, either with addition of meerschaum, pumice stone, burnt hartshorn, in different proportions and combinations, or used quite alone; others are made with myrrh and alum.
Since Gaddesden affirms the existence of means capable of promoting the fall of any tooth, we should suppose that he says nothing about instrumental extraction, or at least that he considers it entirely useless; for if in order to make a tooth fall out, it be sufficient to smear it with frog’s fat, why should there ever be any need to have recourse to the very painful extraction by means of the forceps?