The forceps called “stork’s bill,” as represented in Giovanni d’Arcoli’s work. Forceps pro extrahendis fragmentis quod Rostrum Ciconiæ dicent.
Benedetti recommends that before proceeding to the extraction of a tooth an accurate diagnosis should be made, so that it may not happen that, by mistaking for true odontalgia a pain localized in the gums or in the jaw, a sound tooth be drawn, under the belief that it is the cause of the pain; for, this happening, not only would the pain continue, but there would be, in addition, the loss of a sound tooth, and also the disadvantage of the neighboring ones becoming less firm, for want of support.
This author, too, attributes great importance to dental worms, believing them to be one of the principal and most frequent causes of odontalgia. To kill them he recommends the usual fumigations and several other remedies, among which the juice of the leaves of the centaury or of the peach tree, but especially applications of aqua vitæ.
When it is thought well to have recourse to opium to calm toothache, he advises this to be used with the utmost prudence; and on this point, he relates having witnessed a fatal case, in the person of a gentleman of Padua, by the incautious use of this remedy.
In extraction Benedetti repeats all the precautionary measures recommended by the ancients, and he, too, advises that recourse should not be had to this operation, if not as a last remedy, that is, when every other means of cure has been found useless.[267]
Giovanni of Vigo. The celebrated surgeon Giovanni of Vigo (1460 to 1520), speaking of abscesses of the gums,[268] says that the abscess must be first brought to maturity by fitting remedies, if it has not ripened spontaneously, then it must be opened with a lancet, and lastly, to cleanse the diseased part and to aid cicatrization, honey of roses or Egyptian ointment must be used. This latter is thus composed of: “℞—Verdigris, rock alum, ana two ounces; honey of roses, one ounce; plantain water and pomegranate wine, ana two and one-half ounces. The whole to be made to boil, and to be stirred with a small rod, until the mixture is reduced to the consistency of honey.”
For the cure of old fistulas he employs not only the above-mentioned Egyptian ointment, but also arsenic and corrosive sublimate.
Giovanni of Vigo is very brief in speaking on the treatment of dental caries, doubtless because he attributed little or no value to the numerous methods of cure recommended by his predecessors. The treatment advised by him is, however, very noteworthy. He says that by means of a drill, file, scalpel, or other suitable instrument, it is necessary to remove the whole of the putrefied or corroded part of the teeth, and then, to preserve it, to fill the cavity with gold leaf.
This clear and simple manner of speaking of gold filling as a cure for caries makes us suppose that Giovanni of Vigo was not at all a stranger to the practice of dentistry, as we must think of many preceding writers, but, on the contrary, that he was not less skilled in dental operations than he was in the other branches of surgery. Again, history tells us that Giovanni of Vigo was surgeon to the Roman court; so it would have been strange, indeed, if the Pope, if the haughty prelates, accustomed as they were to all kinds of refinement and comfort, should have intrusted the care of their teeth to lowborn barbers and quacks, whilst they could dispose of the services of so eminent a surgeon.