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Essays and addresses

The torture of toothache is not lacking, that was odontalgia or the forceps for drawing teeth, odontagra or odontagogon, called by the Romans, dentiducwn, a celebrated one being of lea The man without teeth was anodous, or nodos; he with white teeth, argiodous, or argiodon; if his teeth were rough, serrate, etc, he was karcharadous; and if he had a jaw with only one tooth, that is, with the teeth grown together, he was nwnodous, like the son of Prusias, King of Bithynia, "who had one bone in the place of teeth," says Festus ; or Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, "who is said to have had teeth grown to- gether.

" One with prominent teeth was proodous and one who fought with them was odontomaches I do not find any specific name, however, given to dentists : although Herodotus does mention physi- cians for the teeth.

No one can peruse the long list of compounds of the word odous in Greek (2) without appreciating the high regard which that marvellous people had for their teeth and the great care they took of them.

Cicero, indeed, tells us that the third Lsculapius was the first "so they say" to discover toothdrawing (3).

But the practice was not approved unless abso- lutely necessary: three hundred years before Christ the aphorism already had vogue, "dont pull, cure" : and it was almost a binding rule never to extract teeth unless they were so loose as almost to come out by themselves (4).