However, the honor of having initiated the rational treatment of diseases of the maxillary sinus is not exclusively due to William Cowper and to James Drake; a large share is also due to the celebrated German physician and anatomist, Heinrich Meibom. The mucous membrane of the maxillary sinus was considered by him as the real point of departure of the diseases which occur in this cavity, it being liable to become inflamed and to suppurate, thus giving rise to much pain and to various accidents. Meibom rejects the operation of Molinetti, that is, the trepanning of the cavity from the front, the lesion produced in the soft parts of the face being likely to give rise to unpleasant consequences. “Some, he adds, try the introduction of medicated vapors into the antrum,[386] but the best way is to _open the maxillary sinus by extracting a tooth, as the pus generally makes its way as far as the roots of the teeth_.”[387] The author says that his father, who was also a physician, had already used the above method with success. He does not speak at all of the artificial opening of the antrum by perforation; but, as is well known, this is not necessary in many cases, so that, even now, the operation is sometimes reduced to procuring the opening of the sinus by the simple extraction of a tooth, as was, in fact, practised by Heinrich Meibom and his father. Seeing that Heinrich Meibom was born twenty-eight years before William Cowper, and was already known to the scientific world when Cowper was still a child, it is very probable that his operative method, having come to the knowledge of the latter, was only followed up and perfected by him. CHARLES ST. YVES (1667 to 1733), oculist in Paris, records an interesting case of a secondary affection of the maxillary sinus. The point of departure of the evil was an abscess in the orbit. The suppurative process, after having produced an erosion and the perforation of the orbital plane, had reached by propagation the antrum of Highmore, whence the pus took its way, issuing through the nose. St. Yves had a molar tooth extracted on the affected side (we do not know which side it was), after which, day by day, he made injections of detersive liquids through the orbital fistula, which returned constantly through the alveolus of the extracted tooth. By this means the cure of the patient was obtained.[388] CHRISTOPHER SCHELHAMMER (1649 to 1716), who was professor in various German universities, and distinguished himself specially as an anatomist and as an ear doctor, strongly recommends stopping decayed teeth as the best means of causing pain to cease. If, however, the stopping does not hold, by reason of the cavity being too extended, it is then necessary, says Schelhammer, to extract the tooth; this, however, may very well be stopped after extraction, and then replanted, for it will take root again, but no longer be the cause of any pain.[389]