AVENZOAR. The last of the great Arabian physicians was Avenzoar. He was born at Peñaflor, near Seville, in 1070 and died in 1162. He became famous by his very valuable work on medicine, entitled the _Teisir_. It is strange, however, that in this book there is hardly anything about the treatment of dental diseases. Against caries and looseness of the teeth the author limits himself to recommending bloodletting either from the ranine or the basilic vein. Apart from this, he speaks neither of operations nor of remedies for diseases of the teeth.[225] Probably at the time in which Avenzoar wrote, that is, in the first half of the twelfth century, doctors in general did not occupy themselves with the curing of teeth at all, this being abandoned entirely to barbers and other persons. This would sufficiently explain why this author is so silent in regard to dental diseases. But what can have been the reason for doctors refusing thus contemptuously to occupy themselves with so important a branch of therapeutics? In every age there have been a great number of ignorant persons, who either in good faith, or else for imposture, have practised, within a more or less limited circle, the art of healing, usually dedicating themselves to some particular class of diseases. Even in our days, notwithstanding the superabundance of duly qualified doctors, there is, especially in certain countries, no small number of quacks, secretists, bone-setters, chiropodists, and the like. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that in times when dentistry was still in its infancy there should have been persons more or less ignorant who undertook tooth drawing and the concoction and sale of specifics against odontalgia. The doctors, on their part, under the pretext of being unwilling to have anything to do with these individuals, found it very convenient to dispense with the cure of dental diseases and with the extraction of teeth, this operation being sometimes too difficult for them, on account of their want of practice, besides being almost always very painful, and considered, even from the most ancient times, capable of eventually producing evil consequences, among which, in some cases, even the death of the patient. But perhaps this was not the only reason for the fact above mentioned. In the middle ages the extraction of one or more teeth was sometimes inflicted as a punishment; for example, for having eaten flesh during Lent,[226] or on those found guilty of felony, for having refused to contribute sums of money demanded from them by their liege lord. Now, as this punishment was carried out on the guilty ones by the executors of public justice, it is only natural that doctors should have refused to practise an operation which would have degraded their profession by bringing it down nearly to the class of the hangman. CHAPTER IX. THIRTEENTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.