For the eradication of a tooth Arculanus gives three very precise indications: (1) When the pain resists every other means of cure. (2) When there is any danger of the disease spreading to the neighboring healthy teeth. (3) When the tooth is troublesome in speaking and in masticating.
Before extraction, the patient must be prepared for it by bloodletting, purgatives, and narcotics; and the operation must be commenced by separating the gums from the tooth.
Arculanus admits, like many of his predecessors, that the eradication of a tooth may be effected not only by the forceps and other suitable instruments, but also by other means. One of these would be the use of the actual cautery, repeatedly applied inside the hollow of the tooth, if this is decayed; or, in the contrary case, made to act all around its root (neck). The fall of the tooth might also be obtained with potential cauteries and especially by the application of boiling oil, or of a grain of incense heated to the melting point.
It is plain that Giovanni of Arcoli has simply copied these things from preceding authors, since if he had made a trial of the pretended eradicating means, he would soon have verified their inefficiency.
Against hemorrhage of the gums, Arculanus recommends arsenic, lime, gall-nuts, alum, and oil of roses. But, says he, the surest remedy is the red-hot iron; and still more effectual, cauterization by means of red-hot gold.
Giovanni of Arcoli’s work is not only noteworthy because it mentions gold filling for the first time, but also because in it are given the drawings of three dental instruments, among which the pelican (here called pulicanum). According to Carabelli, the first author who has mentioned the pelican was the Dutchman Peter Foreest; according to Geist-Jacobi, instead, it was the German Walter Ryff. But both these statements are false, because as we have just now said, the pelican was already named and designed (not very well, it is true) in the book of the Italian Giovanni of Arcoli, who died in 1484, that is, even before either Walter Ryff or Peter Foreest came into the world. Neither does Giovanni of Arcoli say one word that might imply that he was the inventor of the pelican, and so we are led to believe that in his days this instrument had already been in use for some time. In the text he only says: “The teeth are to be extracted with suitable instruments, whose figures may be seen in the margin.”[266]
We here reproduce the three figures alluded to, with the relative indications. The first (Fig. [56]) represents the pelican; the second (Fig. [57]) is a pair of curved forceps, which seems, in those days, to have been the instrument most commonly used for the extraction of teeth, since this figure is accompanied by the very generic indication “shape of the forceps for extracting teeth;” finally, the third (Fig. [58]) represents the forceps used for extracting dental fragments (roots), and which from the long and straight shape of its jaws, was called “stork’s bill” (rostrum ciconiæ).
Alessandro Benedetti, of Verona, who lived from 1460 to 1525, and taught medicine at Padua, was, for his times, a man of uncommon scientific merit; but to the development of the dental art he did not contribute anything very worthy of note.
He relates that he once abstained from buying a slave simply because the teeth of the latter were like those of wild beasts, a thing which he considered as a bad omen.
According to him, toothache is a disease proper to man, no other animal being liable to it.