JOHANN ACOLUTHUS was obliged, in order to extirpate a large epulis, to previously split the labial commissure. After the ablation of the principal mass of the tumor, he destroyed the remaining part of it by application of the red-hot iron.[372] One reads of other cases of epulis in Stalpaart van der Wyl, Mercklin, Preuss, Bern, Valentini, etc. This last author even speaks of an epidemic of epulis. However this may be, it is very probable that epulis was much more frequent in past times than it is now, and this probably depended partly on the incongruous modes of treating diseases of the mouth, and partly on the slight attention paid to cleanliness of the teeth. KORNELIS VAN SOOLINGEN, a celebrated Dutch physician and surgeon, who flourished toward the end of the seventeenth century, speaks contemptuously of dental operations, and especially of extractions. He says that such operations ought to be left to charlatans, used to taking out teeth with the point of the sword, and to doing many other things of like nature! This unjust contempt was at that time widely diffused in the medical class, it resulted, however, substantially, from the great difficulties encountered by doctors and surgeons in general, in performing the operation of extraction, owing to want of practice, and also from the desire to avoid the responsibility of the accidents to which the extraction might give rise; so true is this, that an author of the preceding century, THEODOR ZWINGER (1538 to 1588), a celebrated Swiss doctor and professor at Basle, had declared with great frankness that the extracting of teeth ought to be left to barbers and charlatans, as it might easily occasion unpleasant accidents, such as fractures of the jaw, laceration of the gums, serious hemorrhage, and the like. In spite of his contempt for practical dentistry, Kornelis van Soolingen takes the treatment of dental affections into attentive consideration. For the stopping of carious teeth, he recommends a mixture similar to that which Rhazes had recommended many centuries before, that is, a cement of mastic and turpentine; because, says he, when the stopping is made with metallic substances, it is never so perfect as to entirely impede the penetration of moisture. Great credit is due to Kornelis for having first brought into usage the instrument makers’ emery wheels for grinding down sharp edges of teeth, thus initiating the practice of trepanning the teeth with sphere-shaped burs.[373] PAUL WURFBEIN refers to a case of extensive necrosis of the lower jaw, in which a certain Dr. Bürlin having removed the necrotic portion, regeneration of the bone took place. FRIEDERICH DEKKERS (1648 to 1730) refers a similar case, in which, although quite one-half of the lower jaw had been removed, the bone formed again completely.[374]