During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the French surgeons, especially Dionis and Verduc, made many practical contributions to dentistry. In 1728 Fauchard wrote in Paris the first complete work on dentistry,--_Le Chirurgien Dentiste, ou Traité des Dents_. Auzebi, of Lyons, wrote another. Le Cluse first mentioned the English turnkey for extraction. Jourdain introduced a number of new and appropriate instruments and new forms of artificial teeth. Bourdet, dentist to the king, made artificial palates. Porcelain teeth were first introduced in France in 1774.
Among the Germans cosmetic dentistry, though still the favorite field of charlatans, was greatly cultivated. Serré wrote a treatise on _Toothache in the Fair Sex During Pregnancy_, but the first public dental clinic in Germany was not established until 1855, by Professor Albrecht, and in Vienna. It has been in Vienna, among the Germans, that dentistry has been in time past most honored, and was taught when it was scarcely recognized in the other German universities. Private dental institutions were also first established in Vienna.
Of all the tooth-extracting instruments, the dental forceps in crude form is the earliest, the first on record, perhaps, being that deposited by Erasistratus in the Delphian temple, as already mentioned. For hundreds of years these instruments scarcely changed in shape. It was Garengeot who invented the _key_, early during the last century. Before that, and for awhile, dentists who had abandoned the forceps used an instrument known as _the pelican_,--said to much resemble the skid used by lumbermen.
Before artificial (porcelain) teeth came into use the following substitutes were employed, their estimated value being in accordance with the order in which I name them:
Human{ 334} teeth, animal teeth, hippopotamus tusk and teeth, elephant-ivory, and bone.
_Human Teeth_.--Transplantation of teeth was at one time very common. After being inserted, they were held in place by pivots and ligatures, springs, and upon bases. The pivot method also included the use of screws. Ligatures for fastening teeth were made of silk-worm gut,--which, now so common in surgery, was used for this purpose, perhaps, two hundred years ago,--of gold wire, etc. The method by ligatures is the earliest of all. Human teeth have always been more or less expensive if fresh, few people being willing to part with sound teeth except for a money consideration. In 1784 a Philadelphia dentist offered, in an advertisement, two guineas each for sound front teeth.