Of these books, there now only exist some extremely rare copies; so much so that neither Albert von Haller nor Kurt and Wilhelm Sprengel, who rendered such great services to the history of surgery, ever had the pleasure of examining them. Dr. Geist-Jacobi has been more fortunate than they, and has therefore been able to give us some very interesting information about their contents. The _Major Surgery_ is a mere compilation which does not contain anything new of importance. It was published in part in 1545, and in part in 1572, after the death of the author. The work is illustrated with very beautiful wood engravings; and it is just this which gives the principal value to this book. Some of the illustrations contained in the first part of it—that is, in that published in 1545—represent dental instruments, notwithstanding dental surgery is not treated in this part of the book. The author gives notice that he will treat all that concerns dental affections in the latter part of this book, in a special chapter. Unfortunately, this chapter was never written, because death prevented Ryff from completing the second part of his work. [Illustration: FIG. 59 Pelican and dental forceps (Walter Hermann Ryff).] The dental instruments represented in his _Major Surgery_ are many in number. Among them, first of all, are found the fourteen dental scrapers of Abulcasis, then the “duck-bill”—designed for the extraction of dental roots and broken teeth—various kinds of pelican (Fig. 59 A), the “common dental forceps” (Fig. 59 B), the “goat’s foot,” and many other kinds of elevators, among which, observes Geist-Jacobi, may be seen instruments even now in use, and even some which are said to have been recently invented. Ryff’s other book is especially noteworthy because, as we have already mentioned, it treats, for the first time, of dental matters, independently of general medicine and surgery. This pamphlet, printed at Würzburg about the year 1544, is made up of sixty-one pages, and is divided into three parts, the first of which is dedicated to the eyes, the second to the teeth, and the third to the first dentition. It is written in popular style, and the author certainly intended it for the instruction of the public, and not for professional men; so true is this, that in it he does not speak of the technical part of the extraction of teeth, or of gold filling—a method already known for a long time—or of dental prosthesis. The first part, relative to diseases of the eyes and the manner of curing them, has no importance for us. The second part begins with the following paragraph: “The eyes and the teeth have an extraordinary affinity or reciprocal relation to one another, by which they very easily communicate to each other their defects and diseases, so that the one cannot be perfectly healthy without the other being so too.”[278]