He speaks first of all of the different causes of odontalgia, and, among these, does not omit to mention worms. These, he says, may be generated in the carious cavities, owing to the putrefaction of substances retained in their interior. Whenever odontalgia is caused by worms, the pain, says Rivière, is not continuous, but ceases and returns at brief intervals; besides, the sufferer perceives at times the movement of the worm inside the tooth! What one reads in the works of this author as to remedies to be used for odontalgia clearly demonstrates how irrationally dental diseases were treated in the seventeenth century and what tortures were inflicted on the patients. In many cases, and especially when the pain was held to be occasioned by “hot humors,” the treatment was begun by bleeding in the arm. The following day an aperient was administered. Afterward, if the pain still persisted, the sufferer was cupped in the region of the scapulæ or of the spine, blisters were applied to the nape of the neck or behind the ears, resinous plasters to the temples; all this without taking into account the remedies which were introduced into the ears, or the various medications or operations performed on the aching part itself, and many other things besides. In fact, in order to cure a toothache, the whole body of the sufferer was seized upon and put to torture, and in the majority of cases they assuredly finished by extracting the diseased tooth! When we reflect on the extraordinary frequency of dental disorders we cannot do less than recognize that the dentists, by the radical change effected in the methods of treatment, have diminished in no small degree the sufferings of humanity! According to Rivière, the small veins (sic) that nourish the teeth pass through the ear (!); and this would explain how the cessation of a toothache may be obtained by the introduction of certain remedies into the meatus auditorius externus. Relief may be obtained, for instance, by dropping oil of bitter almonds into the ear on the side affected by the pain, or by allowing the vapor of hot vinegar, in which pennyroyal or origanum has been boiled, to penetrate into it. Others, adds the author, pour a little pure vinegar into the ear, which is especially efficacious against “hot fluxions.” When, however, the toothache depends on a “cold fluxion,” it calms the pain wonderfully to drop into the ear a tepid mixture of garlic juice and theriac. The same advantage, says the author, may be obtained by introducing a piece of garlic, peeled and cut into the form of a suppository, into the ear. The author also makes a lengthy enumeration of anodyne and narcotic remedies (among which opium), observing, however, that those remedies, unless the vehemence of the pain obliges the use of them, ought not to have the preference, it being much more rational and much more advantageous to institute a cure which aims directly at the cause itself of the pain (fluxions, worms, etc.).