Connecticut western news., 1906-12-13
CRUDE STYLE OF DENTISTRY.
Modern Methods Date from the Six.
 teenth Century.

Modern Methods Date from the Six.
 teenth Century.
 In a dental school in Boston Is a collection of hundreds of old dental instruments, the fathers, grand fathers and great-grandfathers of the instruments with which we are all more or less familiar in the hands of modern dentists. The ancient tools are more suggestive of wood carving than of dental operations. and a person uniformed on the sub ject would handle the old keys" as they were called. and guess almost any purpose in the world for them rather than the real one of wrench ing a tooth out of a human jaw. One of the most ponderous of these in- struments was made by an American blacksmith, little more than fifty years ago, and used by him to ex- tract teeth-a curious commentary on the then general condition of science that Is now so widespread.
 Less than century ago there were only a hundred practiciug den- lists on this side of the water. There Is reason to believe that the number of rough and ready surgeon dentists was much greater than we may have any idea of The famous Aescula- plus, patron of physicians, is said to have been the first tooth butler in Roman history and there are records also of the presence of dentists in Egypt more than 2300 years ago. How they worked. however. Is one of the interesting secrets that remains kept. although it Is known that they had some method of filling teeth and even used gold for that purpose. The first known mention of the toothpick was made during the first century of the Christian era-ani so far as may now be judged. 1t very much re- sembled the little wooden instru- ment that modern politeness declares should never ha used In public. There are also dentifrices-an Arabian produce-brighten of the mouth," for example, which was evi- dently confined to comparatively few users.
 Modern dentistry and modern den- tal instruments date only from the sixteenth century. The superstition Of the Middle Ages evolved host of eharlatans, whose pictures may 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 seri- oas condition. From these charlatan the modern dentist has descended very much as the all-important sci- enlist of to-day may be traced back directly to the ancient alchemist. Among other things they bought liv- ing teeth and transplauted them-a horrible instance of which In later times may be remembered by any one who has read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.'
 One of the first printed books on dentistry was published about the middle of the sixteenth century in Spain. The book was called Brief and Corporations Colloquy on the structure of the Denture and the Wonderful Construction of tEe Mouth. With Many Remedies and Necessary Advice. Together With the Mode of Treating and Beautifying the Teeth" and ended with an eu- graving of St. Appolonia-the patron saint of dentistry because her mar tyrdom had included the extraction of her teeth. This one book embraced all that was then known of den- tistry.
 It was not until TIPS that Perri Fouchard, the most celebrated den- ,al operator of the time in Paris, began using the first dental chair, in which he sometimes performed the curious and practical bygone opera ton of extracting a tooth, treating 1t for decay and then putting 1t back again-an operation that, however expeditiously performed, could never have been invariably successful, al- though it Is still done in emergen- cies. One of the modern cases of den- tistry, for example, comes in this category.