Even in certain cases of violent toothache not depending on caries, Bourdet luxated the tooth and replaced it in position directly. But as some dentists had accused him of having passed off as new an operation already made known by Mouton since the year 1746, Bourdet defended himself by saying that whilst Mouton only shook the tooth, raising it a little, simply to distend the nerve, he, instead, effected a complete luxation, in order altogether to interrupt the continuity of the nerve. Anyhow, this operation was not new, as it had already been recommended and practised by Peter Foreest, in the sixteenth century, and in an even more remote epoch by the Arabian surgeon Abulcasis. Sometimes, when the permanent canine comes forth, it has not room enough, and therefore grows outward. In this case Bourdet extracts the first premolar; the canine then advances gradually of itself toward the space left by the extracted tooth, until it occupies its place exactly. He also counsels the extraction of the first premolar on the opposite side of the jaw, in order to preserve the perfect symmetry of the dental arch on both sides. When the arch formed by the jaws is too large and of an ugly appearance, Bourdet advises extracting the first upper and lower premolars, so that the maxillary arches may acquire a more regular form. In cases in which the defect of form exists only in the lower jaw, that is, in children who have protruding chins, Bourdet corrects this deformity by extracting the first lower molars shortly after their eruption, that is, toward seven years of age. In this manner, says the author, the lower jaw grows smaller and the deformity disappears. The inventor of this method, as Bourdet himself tells us, was the dentist Capuron. Bourdet made prosthetic pieces, whose base, representing the gums and the alveoli, was made entirely of gold and covered over with flesh-colored enamel on the outside, so as to simulate the natural appearance of the gums; the teeth were adjusted into the artificial alveoli and fixed with small pins. At other times he made use of a single piece of hippopotamus tusk, in which he carved not only the base, but also the three back teeth on each side, whilst the ten front teeth were human teeth fixed to the base with rivets. One of Bourdet’s principal merits is that of having brought artificial plates to perfection by fixing them not, as heretofore, to the opening of the palate or inside the nose, but by means of lateral clasps fitted to the teeth. In a special pamphlet, published in 1764,[486] Bourdet treats of the diseases of Highmore’s antrum. To facilitate the exit of pathological humors from the sinus, after the Cowper operation, he introduced a small cannula, forked at one end, into the antrum and fixed the two branches of the fork to the neighboring teeth by tying. In some diseases of the maxillary sinus (polypus, sarcoma, etc.) Bourdet recommends cauterizing.