The Operator for the Teeth: Charles Allen 1685
The first English Dentistry Text-book.
Page 15
stump like a little bladder. For the cure of this sort of tooth-ache, besides the application of other necessary remedies, the bleeding of the gums is very convenient.
Furthermore, if that portion of the blood, which is diffused through the substance of the brain for the production of the animal spirits, is so depraved that all the sifting it receives, through the hidden meanders and recesses of the brain, cannot clear it from its impurities, and that notwithstanding all the contrivances of nature, it is deposited into the ventricles of the brain, (tho’ under another form yet) still impregnated with its ill qualities, such sort of animal spirits, being compounded of heterogeneous parts, if not timely discharged of their malignant and offensive corpuscles, (through the usual Emunctories) will either by their fermentation in the Ventricles of the brain cause a head-ache; or by the oppilation of its pores, cause a giddiness, or else passing out of the brain into the nerves, will by their irregular motion and preternatural extension of the coats of the nerves, and other tunicles, breed a disturbance in all the parts they go to: but more particularly in the teeth in which they always excite very great pains. For discharging the peccant humour, between the membrane that invests the inside of the tooth, and that that encloses its vessels, it occasions a perpetual torment in them; till it be expelled from thence by transpiration. This second type of tooth-ache may be caused by sternutation: and the application of aperitive remedies, to open the pores of the affected tooth. These are the two general causes of the tooth-ache, and all the rest proceeding from them, some few excepted.
The looseness of the teeth comes most commonly from the decay of the gums, which are subject to many infirmities, proceeding for the most part from those things that occasion the tooth-ache, and putrefaction of the teeth; for sometimes there