M. BUNON (died 1749), a French dentist, wrote four admirable works on dentistry, which were published from 1741 to 1744. We will here briefly allude to the most salient ideas therein contained. This author combated strenuously some prejudices then generally diffused; such as that of its not being advisable to extract teeth during pregnancy, and that of the extraction of an upper canine (eye tooth) being attended with great danger. He demonstrated the absurdity of the latter idea by putting in evidence the anatomical fact that the upper canines are innervated by the infra-orbital nerve, which does not stand in any relation whatever to the organ of sight.[471] Among the other remedies recommended by him against the disorders and perils of first dentition, there is one most curious, not to say ridiculous: he advises rubbing the nape of the neck, the shoulders, the back, and the lower limbs of the child, but in doing this the friction should proceed from above downward, in order to offer resistance to the flow of humors toward the upper parts of the body. The utility and efficacy of this kind of massage in favoring the process of dentition seems, of a truth, very open to question. Bunon speaks at length of _erosion of the teeth_, and declares himself to be the discoverer of this disease, which destroys the enamel of the teeth already before their eruption. The first molars, the canines, and the incisors are much more frequently damaged and affected by it than the other teeth. According to Bunon, it is generally due to measles, smallpox, malignant fevers, or scurvy, when children are subject to these maladies during dentition, and more especially during the first. He is of the opinion that erosion not only generates caries, but may be considered as being the origin of the greater part of dental affections. This author distinguishes three principal kinds of dental tartar, the black, the pale yellow, and the brownish yellow; he admits, however, two other kinds that are less frequent, that is, the red tartar and the green. He relates having observed in the jaw of a child, who died at the age of three years and a half, a splintering of the alveolar parietes in all directions, and attributes this phenomena to disproportion between the size of the teeth and the alveoli. On the basis of his anatomical observations, he says that caries only appears on teeth that have already come out of the gums, whilst erosion is produced in teeth not yet erupted, indeed, at times, several years previous to their eruption. We will also mention, by way of a curiosity, Bunon’s proposal to substitute the word legs for that of dental roots.[472]