It may, however, be seen from the very book of Giovanni of Vigo,[269] that in his days doctors and surgeons were, in general, little skilled in dental matters. Speaking of the extraction of teeth, he says: “For this operation there is need of a practised man, and, therefore, many medical and surgical authorities have expressed an opinion that this operation should be left to expert barbers and to the itinerant quacks who operate in public places. He, therefore, who desires to perform this manual operation in the best manner will derive great advantage by frequenting men who are expert in performing it and by seeing and impressing well on his memory their manner of operating.”[270]
PART III.
THIRD PERIOD—MODERN TIMES.
CHAPTER X.
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
We have now arrived at the sixteenth century. The middle ages, that is, the period of transition between ancient and modern civilization, has now come to an end. Events of the highest importance, such as the invention of printing (1436), the taking of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), with the consequent emigration of many Greek men of letters and science, who took up their residence in the West and especially in Italy, and lastly, the discovery of America (1492), marked the beginning of a new era, and are the most essential factors in bringing about the revival of art and science.
In the midst of the vigorous intellectual life which characterized the sixteenth century, dentistry, too, like many other branches of science, made very notable progress; we, therefore, in this period shall have to record many important facts and many important names.
It is, indeed, in the sixteenth century, and, to be more precise, about the year 1544, that we meet for the first time with a monograph, in which dental affections are spoken of independently of general medicine and surgery. The book we allude to, by Walter Hermann Ryff, is also noteworthy because it is not written like the preceding works, in Latin, the customary language of the learned, but, instead, in German, that is, in a living tongue.
As we are now mentioning the first German author on Dentistry, it may be permitted us briefly to glance at the beginning of medicine and dental art among the German peoples.