In cases of difficult dentition, the best remedy, according to Musitano, for facilitating the eruption of the teeth consists in friction of the gums, once, or at most twice, with blood drawn fresh from the comb of a cock! If, however, even this remedy fails to produce the desired effect, it will then be necessary to lance the gum at the point where the tooth is to erupt, or to press it hard with the thumb, that the tooth may the easier come through. The sole merit of this author (as to what concerns our specialty) consists in his having declared bleeding useless, or even harmful in the treatment of toothache, and, besides, in his having recommended, with great warmth and in most impressive terms, cleanliness of the teeth. What is more beautiful, says he, than a mouth furnished with white teeth, similar to so many pearls? And what is more abominable than black or livid teeth, covered with a fetid deposit or with tartar? Unclean teeth spoil the appearance of the person, and nauseate those who behold them.[383] WILLIAM COWPER (1666 to 1709). Toward the end of the seventeenth century the celebrated English doctor and anatomist, William Cowper, opened up a new field of action to oral surgery by inaugurating the rational treatment of the diseases of the maxillary sinus. In order to empty Highmore’s antrum of deposits and to be able to carry out the necessary irrigations, he extracted in most cases the first permanent molar, and then penetrated through its alveolus into the sinus with a pointed instrument. JAMES DRAKE, also an Englishman and a contemporary of Cowper, operated in the same manner; and it was this author who made known in a book of his[384] the operative method of Cowper; for which reason the above-mentioned proceeding is sometimes called “the Cowper-Drake operation.” A certain time elapsed, however, before it became generally known. Thus, in a book published by JOHANN HOFFMANN in 1713 there is no mention made of this operation, albeit the author refers therein[385] to the case of a young girl, one of whose canine teeth having been extracted by him, there ensued a considerable flow of whitish pus from the maxillary sinus. In speaking of this case, Hoffmann stigmatizes many of the surgeons of his time who were not acquainted with the existence of Highmore’s antrum, and therefore, in cases of patients whose teeth had fallen out as an effect of syphilis, if they happened to penetrate with the sound into the maxillary sinus, believed this to be an accidental excavation of the bone, produced by caries.