Besides his principal work, the pamphlet on the diseases of Highmore’s antrum, and some others of less importance, Bourdet wrote an excellent book on dental hygiene,[487] which had the honor of two translations, one German, the other Italian; the latter published in Venice in 1773. This celebrated author inveighs bitterly against charlatans and quack dentists, and throws light on all their impostures. It appears, however, that in the midst of this despicable class, so justly condemned by him, there existed a courageous though unscientific operator, to whom posterity would have attributed due honor had his name been handed down, for he was the first, in all probability, to try the implanting of teeth in artificial alveoli. This is, at least, what we deduce from a passage in one of Bourdet’s works, in which we read that a charlatan sought to impose on the public the belief that he could make a hole in the jawbone and plant therein an expressly prepared artificial tooth, which in a brief space of time would become perfectly firm and as useful as a natural one. Bourdet adds that an attentive investigation led to the recognition of the said tooth being simply that of a sheep. It would appear, therefore, that the operation had been in reality performed, it matters but little whether with the tooth of a sheep or with one of another kind. JOURDAIN was another eminent writer on dental matters, at this period. Rather than a true surgeon-dentist like Fauchard and Bourdet, Jourdain was a general surgeon who had dedicated himself with particular predilection to the study and treatment of oral and maxillary diseases. And precisely for this reason his writings, although of great scientific importance, are far from possessing for dental art, properly so-called, the same value as the works of Fauchard, Bourdet, and other great dentists of the eighteenth century. His works, as Geist-Jacobi justly observes, give us the impression of his having been a theorist rather than a practical dentist.