A History of Dentistry from the most Ancient Times until the end of the Eighteenth Century. Vincenzo Guerini

      Dentures in terra-cotta, such as the Etruscans used to present to their divinities as votive offerings in order to be cured, or after having been cured of dental maladies.

      As to what concerns dental art, everything leads up to the belief that it was practised by the Egyptians and Phœnicians earlier than by the Etruscans, whose civilization, as already hinted, is certainly less ancient. Nevertheless, in comparing the dental appliances found in the Etruscan tombs with the sole authentic dental appliance of Phœnician workmanship known at the present day,105 we cannot but be struck with the great superiority of the Etruscan appliances. It is therefore probable that the Etruscans, although they had learned the dental art from the Egyptians and Phœnicians, had subsequently carried it to a much higher degree of perfection than it had arrived at in Egypt or in Phœnicia. An analogous fact has come to pass in our own times. Dental art in America, which emanated from the French and English schools, soon took on so vigorous a development as indisputably to acquire first rank.

      Before describing in detail the dental appliances found up to now in Etruscan tombs, we will consider a question touching very closely upon the argument which we are treating and which has already been discussed in Professor Deneffe’s book, already cited.

      How is it that the dental appliances of the Phœnicians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans should have come down to us, notwithstanding cremation?

      In the first place, if one reflects that the teeth offer an altogether special resistance to the action of fire, and if one also remembers that gold was the substance employed for the construction of the appliances in question, and that this metal does not melt save at a very high temperature, it no longer appears marvellous if, in many cases at least, the dental appliances should have been able to resist the cremating process.

      In the second place, the cremation may possibly sometimes have been incomplete—that is to say, the skeleton may not have been altogether reduced to ashes; therefore, among the residuum of this incomplete combustion, a piece of a jaw may easily have remained, and incidentally also its prosthetic appliance.

      But besides all this, it must be considered that the custom of burning corpses was not at all general among ancient people. Indeed, cremation was not in use either among the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, or the Chinese; the Greeks only resorted to it in exceptional cases. The most ancient tombs of the Etruscans show that at the epoch of their settling in Italy, cremation was in general use among them. But little by little, as they entered into commercial relations with the Egyptian, the Phœnician, and the Greek peoples, who did not burn their dead, the custom of burial substituted that of cremation. Toward the end of the sixth century before Christ there were to be found in southern Etruria, one beside the other, tombs for the burial of corpses and others for cremation.

      One sometimes finds in one and the same tomb a cinerarium (urn for conserving ashes) and skeletons enclosed in sarcophagi or resting on mortuary couches.

      At Tarquinii and Orvieto burial generally prevails.

      In the fifth century B.C., the epoch in which the Law of the Twelve Tables was promulgated, burial and cremation were equally in use among the Romans. In the second century of the Christian era burial was already prevalent, and through the influence of Christianity became general during the third and fourth centuries.106

Fig. 13	Fig. 14
Tooth crowns found in an Etruscan tomb of the ancient Vitulonia (Archæological Museum of Florence). The enamel-capsules of these teeth (four molars and one canine) are perfectly well preserved, whilst the ivory has entirely disappeared.	The same tooth crowns of the preceding figure, seen from the side of the concavity of the enamel capsules.

      Notwithstanding cremation, which certainly must have destroyed a great number of the dental appliances of that time, and in spite of the many different destructive agents which successively did their work on those human remains during so many centuries, not a few prosthetic pieces of Etruscan workmanship have come down to us; from which we may argue that dental prosthesis was not an exceptional fact among this people, as some may perhaps suppose, but, on the contrary, must have been a very usual practice.

      The dental appliances discovered up to now among Etruscan remains are preserved in different Italian museums, with the exception of some few existing in private collections or of others that have passed out of Italy into other countries.

      In the museum of Pope Julius in Rome there is a dental appliance found at Valsiarosa in one of the many Etruscan tombs excavated in that locality near Civita Castellana, the ancient Falerii (Fig. 15). This appliance is formed by a series of four gold rings meant to encircle four teeth (canine, bicuspids, and first molar). The third ring is traversed by a pivot riveted at the two extremities, which was meant to hold fast an artificial tooth (the second bicuspid); this is wanting, however. One naturally puts the question. How is the disappearance of this tooth to be accounted for, it having been traversed by the pivot, which is still found in its place? The suppositions are two: Either the artificial tooth was made of some not very durable material, which, in the course of time, became reduced to powder or fell to pieces, or may have been destroyed in some other way; or else the artificial tooth, instead of being simply perforated to allow the pivot to pass through, was cleft longitudinally at its base and, being introduced into the ring sat, so to speak, astride the pivot. In the second case, which, however, seems to me the less probable of the two, the tooth may merely have come off the pivot and gotten lost.

      In the Civic Museum of Corneto, the ancient Tarquinii, there are two dental appliances, one of which (Figs. 16 and 17) is of the greatest interest. It was found in one of the most ancient tombs in the necropolis of Tarquinii. This specimen of prosthesis is formed of three teeth; the two upper central incisors and the second bicuspid on the left, which is no longer in existence.

Fig. 15