A History of Dentistry from the most Ancient Times until the end of the Eighteenth Century. Vincenzo Guerini
Ya-jong. Gums swollen and painful, abscess, fever, swollen cheeks; great thirst, and vomiting of a liquid kind; dejections dry. The treatment consists in the methodical use of certain medicines to be used internally, among which is rhubarb. If one neglects to make use of this treatment, an ulceration sets in with discharge of a purulent and sanguine mucus; it is then necessary to rub the part with a medicinal substance called by the Chinese, ping-pang-san. Should the tooth be somewhat loose, it ought to be extracted and the gum rubbed again with the substance just now named.
6. Tso-ma-ya-kan. An illness common to children after the smallpox; ulceration of the gums, which turn black; fetid breath. In certain cases the gums are hard and the mucous membrane of the cheek is also attacked; all the teeth shake; there is flow of blood from the gums, upon which certain spots begin to form that are clearly distinguishable as small holes. These holes must be filled with a particular medicinal substance (named lay-ma-ting-kouei-sse), and, besides, one ought to make use of various other internal and external remedies.
This is a very serious illness. In the case of recovery, the patient ought to abstain from taking any heating aliment for one hundred days.
7. Tsee-kin-tong or tsee-ly-tong. Gums swollen; slight but continuous pain, aggravated by the effort of the wind; the gums become ulcerated little by little, with discharge of purulent and sanguine mucus; and the root of the tooth is afterward seen to be uncovered. This malady is to be treated by means of draughts, pills, mouth washes, and frictions of various kinds.
After the treatise on the maladies referred to above, we find in Dabry’s book a long series of “general remedies for every kind of toothache.” There are about forty of these, and decoctions and powders predominate among them, the latter to be rubbed on the painful spot. Decoctions are the form of medicament most in use among the Chinese. In this list of about forty anti-odontalgic remedies we find as many as eighteen decoctions, seven for internal use, and the others to be employed as mouth washes. Some of the latter are compounded with vinegar instead of with water.
Four remedies of the above list are to be made into a paste and formed into pills, to be applied upon the aching tooth.
Another medicament is also to be formed into pills and applied inside the ear.
The following remedy is particularly worthy of note:
“One roasts a bit of garlic, crushes it between the teeth, and afterward mixes it with chopped horseradish seeds, reducing the whole to a paste with human milk; one then forms it into pills; these are to be introduced into the nose on the side opposed to that where the pain is situated.”
Two other remedies, in powder, are to be snuffed up through the nose.
A powder to prevent the progress of caries is prescribed, with which the tooth should be rubbed every day, or it may be applied on the decayed spot.
Finally, two powders are also prescribed for whitening the teeth. One of these is compounded of seven ingredients, among which is musk; the other has only three substances in its composition: salt (gram 25), musk (gram 1.8), tsang-eul-tsee (gram 36).
A therapeutic method much in vogue among the Chinese is acupuncture, which is used in the treatment of the greatest variety of affections, including those of the dental system. The doctors of the Celestial Empire have the greatest faith in this operation, which they hold capable of removing obstacles to the free circulation of humors and vital spirits, thus reëstablishing that equilibrium of the organic forces which constitutes health, and the absence of which causes disease.
The Chinese doctors prefer to use gold or silver needles for puncturing; but they also frequently use needles of the best steel. These instruments vary very much in length, in thickness, and in form, and there are not less than nine distinct kinds of puncturing needles.
Every doctor who intends dedicating himself to the practice of this operation has to begin by the most accurate study of the elective points for puncturing according to the various affections; he should also know to what depth precisely to drive the needles in each case, in order to reach the site of the morbific principle and procure convenient exit for it; he ought to know equally well how long to leave the needle in the affected part, so as to obtain the best possible therapeutic results in each case.
The points of election for carrying out puncturing in various maladies are spread over the whole superficies of the body, and amount in number to 388. Each of these is known by a special name. Each site of election stands in determinate relations, as to distance, to the known anatomical points, and may, therefore, be easily and precisely found by appropriate measurement. The unity of length for these measurements is called tsun, and is divided into ten fen; its value varies, however, according to whether the said measurements be taken on the head, the trunk, or the extremities. For the head, the length of the tsun is calculated as equal to the distance existing between the inner and the outer angle of the eye; for the trunk, it is equivalent to the eighth part of the horizontal line between the two breast nipples; and for the extremities, it is equal to the length of the second phalanx of the middle finger, measured with the joints bent.
There are twenty-six points of election upon which to carry out puncturing used as a remedy against toothache. There are also six other points of election for pains in the gums.
One would naturally be disposed to believe that these points of election would be situated in proximity to the teeth. Instead, many of them are situated in distant parts of the body—for example, in the elbow, in the hands, the feet, the vertebral region, the coccyx, and so on. However, about half of them are to be found in the labial, maxillary, and periauricular regions.
The puncturing of every point of election is almost always indicated for the cure of not only one but several, and, indeed, very often many, maladies; for example, the puncture carried out on the point of election, kin-tche, situated at the outer extremity of the bend of the elbow, may be utilized in more than twenty-five morbid conditions; among which are pains in the arm, paralysis of the arm, edema of the whole body, excessive perspiring, vomiting, hematemesis, toothache, boils, gastralgia, hemiplegia, and even cholera!
This mode of cure depends on the special relation of each point of election to the so-called canals of transmission and communication (named in Chinese king) through which the blood and the vital spirits circulate, and which serve at the same time to transmit the “innate heat” and “the radical moisture” to all parts of the body.
And here we must be allowed a brief digression in explanation of what we have just said.
The anatomical notions of the Chinese are very erroneous;27 their ideas on the functions of the human body and of human life in general, differ considerably from ours. They recognize two natural principles of vitality, one they call yang (vital, primordial, or “innate heat”), the other yn (radical moisture). The spirits (that is the air) and the blood serve as vehicles to these two essential principles of life; that is, vital heat and radical moisture. The constant equilibrium, the accord, the perfect union of these two essential principles of life constitute a state of health. From their alteration, corruption, or disunion originate all diseases.
There are twelve principal sources of vitality in the human organism; that is, twelve organs from which the two aforesaid vital principles are distributed throughout the body: The heart, the liver, the two kidneys, the lungs, and the spleen are the seat and origin of radical moisture; the large and the small intestine, the two ureters, the gall-bladder, and the stomach are the seat and origin of vital heat. These twelve sources of life are in intimate relation with one another by means of the canals of communication, through which the blood and the vital spirits (air) circulate, carrying with them into every part of the body vital heat and radical moisture.28
The points of election upon which to carry out puncturing are situated along the course of the large lines of communication and transmission; and that explains, according to the Chinese medical theories, why a puncture carried out on a given point of the body can prove useful in relieving a variety of maladies even in distant parts of the organism.
Puncturing is almost always associated