One would be inclined to believe that the author who qualifies these remedies as vain, fantastic, superstitious, and ridiculous was a thoroughly unprejudiced man; however, this is not so. Strobelberger, too, had to pay his tribute to the dominating prejudices of his century; this manifestly appears from various passages in his book, and especially from the Chapters XVI and XLIV. The first of these bears the following title: “How to procure immunity from toothache,” and Strobelberger therein asserts in all seriousness, basing his assertion on the authority of Rhazes, that “if the canine tooth of a lion be suspended to a child’s neck before the milk teeth fall out and during the eruption of the second teeth, it will secure the child immunity from dental pains.” In Chapter XLIV the author speaks of those animals whose teeth are useful to man as remedies against toothache, and reiterates—lending, as it seems, perfect faith thereto—various prejudices that are found in Pliny and other writers of antiquity. As to the remedies which Strobelberger recognizes as _vain_—that is, as devoid of real curative virtue—he remarks that they may nevertheless be useful by acting powerfully on the imagination of the sufferer, thus causing, in fact, the cessation of pain (Chapter LVII). This clear and explicit affirmation of the efficacy of suggestion in a book published 270 years ago is certainly not without interest. If, says Strobelberger, a place is to be accorded, in dental therapeutics, to the _vain_ remedies, among these, amulets deserve the preference; and the best accredited amulet is the root of the lepidium, already recommended by Dioscorides, who affirms that if it be hung around the neck of the sufferer it will cause the pain to cease. One of the _superstitious_ remedies to be used against this affection (Chapter LVIII), consists in touching the aching tooth with the tooth of a dead person, and afterward greasing it with horse’s marrow. Among the _ridiculous_ remedies (Chapter LIX), the author describes one that was especially in use among soldiers. With a piece of chalk or of rubble one writes on a table: Chiacia Chiacia Chiacia X O X X O X X O X One then pricks the tooth with a knife or an iron toothpick until it bleeds slightly; then thrusting the point of the instrument, to which the blood adheres, into the first cross, then into the second, then into the third, and so on, one asks the patient each time if the tooth still pains him. Before one gets to the last cross the pain ceases! This stolid cure, says the author, has no other value than that of the scarification of the part affected.