The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-05

itv if Is not so very difficult to argue that the average human teeth are real ly very much better than they were some centuries ago. When Ovid. for example, wrote Let not the nymph with laughter much
 abound ,.
 unsound" .xI 1t seems pretty safe to conclude that ..nymphs' of that description were fae from uncommon in the ancient Roman empire of which he was writing. Ana when the English essayist Laurence Sterne, writing centuries afterward. speaks of a "pearly set of teeth so beautiful that Royalty would have nawned her choicest jewels for them 1t rather goes to show that the teeth even of royalty were by no means al together unexceptionable.
 Nowadays, in fact. not only could royalty obtain this envied charm at the hands of any first class specialist in dentistry, but even the poorest person in modern Boston could obtain similar treatment in the free clinics of the Harvard Dental School And the fact that in this ono school nearly 10000 persons d year avail themselves of free dentistry is very good indication of the place taken by the modern dentist in making human teeth presentable and serviceable. Less than century ago there were only a hundred practising dentists on this side of the water. Dentistry, in other words, was for many centuries a little developed occu- patton; yet there is reason to believe that the number of rough and ready surgeon dentists was much greater | than we now have any idea of. The | famous Aescularius, patron of physi- clans, Is said to have been the first iv, h cfn l there are records also of the presence | of dentists in Egypt more than 2,300 years ago. How they worked. how l ever, is one of the interesting secrets that remains kept. although 1t Is | known that they Lad some method of | filling teeth and even used gold for ! that purpose. The first known mention | of the toothpick was made during the l first century of the Christian era-and | 50 far may now be judged it very much resembled the httIa wooden in l strument that modern politeness de- clares should never be used in public. | There were also dentifrices-an mouth,' for example. which was evil dently confined to comparatively few | users.
 Modern dentistry and modern dental | instruments, however, date only from | sixteenth century. The Dark Ages, | WHei lHe TeIineI1ent-and with It the | over refined teeth--of the ancient civil. | izations was swept away by barbarian | conquest. swept away also all that was | then known of dental science, and the | struggle between the gastronomic de- | velopment of civilization and the strong | serviceable teeth of the savage con- querors began all over again. AS civil | ization again began to develop, teeth | began to show the effects. The super- stition of the Middle Ages evolved a | host of charlatans. whose pictures may l still occasionally be seen in the early | prints and who charmed away tooth- ache by forms of magic which show that the teeth of their patients could hardly have been in such very serious | conditioon. From these charlatans the modern dentist has descended, very much may be traced back directly to the ancient alchemist. Among other things they bought living teeth and transplanted them-a horrible instance of which in later times may be remem- bered by anyone who has ever read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables ."
 One of the first printed books on dentistry was published about the mid dle of the sixteenth century in Spain and Is especially interesting because it printed illustrations of probably all the dental instruments then in use. The book was called Brief and Compen- dious Colloquy on the Structure of the DentSre and the Wopderfm C0nstEues