Evidently Cintio d’Amato treats of dental matters only within extremely restricted limits. He tells us nothing with regard to the treatment of toothache, nothing about caries, about prosthesis, and, what is still more remarkable, he does not allude even in passing to the extraction of teeth. Now, if in a book treating _of all that which appertains to the diligent barber_, the most important dental subjects are passed over in silence, this shows that, contrary to the generally diffused opinion of today, the dental art was not at that time (at least not in Italy) exclusively, or even in great part, in the hands of the barber. Even at that time there must have been dental specialists, and the proof of this may be found in d’Amato’s book itself, in the chapter entitled “Necessity and Origin of the Barber’s Art.”[379] The author, after having spoken of the divisions which the practice of the medical art had undergone from the most remote times, and after having alluded to the great number of parts into which Medicine was divided in the time of Galen, adds: “Which may also be seen in our own times, for as many as are the members of the human body, so many are nowadays the various kinds of doctors and of medicines. Some are for the teeth, some are for the ears, some for sexual maladies, others are ordinary doctors, others cure cataracts, others ruptures and stone, some make new ears, lips, noses, and others remedy harelips.” As, under the generic name of doctors, Cintio d’Amato also comprises surgeons, it results from the above passage that in his time, that is, in the seventeenth century, there were surgeons who dedicated themselves specially to the treatment of the teeth; there were, in fact, dentists; and even admitting that the greater number of these were no better than simple tooth-pullers, this cannot be true of them all indiscriminately. Cintio d’Amato’s book demonstrates in the most vivid manner that even among the barber and phlebotomist class, that is, among the practitioners of minor surgery, there were, at that time, men of considerable culture. This ought to hold good with still greater reason concerning surgeons, whose professional level was certainly superior to that of barbers;[380] and as dentists belonged to the class of surgeons (whence the denomination still in use of “surgeon-dentist”), it is but natural to admit that besides the ignorant tooth-puller there were even then more or less cultured dentists well capable of treating dental diseases and performing dental operations within the limits permitted by the knowledge of the times. The six chapters in which Cintio d’Amato speaks of matters referring to the teeth do not contain anything whatever of real importance; notwithstanding this, we will here refer to the beginning of Chapter XXXIX, treating “Of tartar and spots on the teeth,” because it is of some historical interest: [Illustration: A TOOTH-PULLER AT A PUBLIC PLACE IN HOLLAND