The looseness of teeth, which depends on dryness or want of nutrition, as in the old and in consumptive people, is incurable. In other kinds of looseness, astringents are useful; but it is also well that the patient should speak but little, that he should not touch or move the loose tooth, nor use it in masticating. In cases of corrosion of the gums, this disease must be cured. If looseness of the teeth follows a blow, it is well, first of all, to let blood, and then to use astringents and excitants. When all this is of no avail, Guy advises that the loose teeth be tied to the healthy ones with a little gold chain,[247] after the manner of Abulcasis. And if, says he, the teeth fall out, they may be replaced with teeth of another person, or with artificial teeth of ox bone, fixing them in their place with a fine ligature; and, he adds, that such teeth are serviceable for a long time. Here are the precise words of the text: “Et si les dents tombent, qu’on y mette des dents d’un autre, ou qu’on en forge d’os de vache, et soient lisez finement, et on s’en sert long-temps.” This extremely concise manner of treating dental prosthesis, summing all up in some thirty words, is in strong contrast with the usual fulness of explanation and methodical accuracy of Guy de Chauliac, to whom, very justly, could be given the title of founder of didactical surgery. Such a strange contrast cannot be explained, unless by admitting that Guy considered dental prosthesis as foreign to the general plan of his book, that is, as something which did not directly concern surgeons, and for which, therefore, a mere allusion ought to be sufficient. Without the slightest doubt, dental prosthesis was practised neither by doctors nor surgeons, but by the _dentatores_. Abulcasis, too, certainly for the same reason, is extremely brief in speaking of artificial teeth, but, on the other hand, he very minutely describes the process of ligating loose teeth. Guy omits this description entirely, and only alludes briefly to this therapeutic practice. From this it is easy to perceive that whilst Abulcasis considered this operation within the province of surgeons, Guy de Chauliac was disposed to exclude it from the field of general surgery, considering that this, too, like the other dental operations, belonged to the _dentatores_. In his days, in short, dentistry had become much more clearly specialized than it was in the days of Abulcasis. After having spoken of the looseness of teeth, Guy de Chauliac goes on to treat of caries, in a short chapter, entitled “De la Pourriture, des vers, de corrosion et pertuifement des dents.”