It is easily to be understood that as only loose teeth were to be extracted, Hippocrates considered the extraction of teeth a very easy operation, notwithstanding that the instruments then in use cannot have been other than very imperfect; and this is clearly to be seen from a passage in the book entitled _De medico_, where, after having spoken of the articles and instruments that ought to be kept in a doctor’s office (_officina medici_), he adds: “These are the instruments necessary to the doctor’s operating room and in the handling of which the disciple should be exercised; as to the pincers for pulling out teeth, anyone can handle them, because evidently the manner in which they are to be used is simple.”[56] [Illustration: FIG. 8 Very ancient dental forceps and two other dental (?) instruments existing in the Archæological Museum of Athens.] Having made mention of the _officina medici_, we think it opportune to explain here with some precision what is to be understood by this term.[57] Medicine and surgery were practised in ancient times in open shops; this was so in Greece, and later also in Rome. When the practice of medicine became secularized through its abandoning the Æsculapian temples, doctors’ shops began to arise in the most important centres of population, to which those in need of assistance resorted or were carried. In time these stations for the practice of medicine, and particularly of surgery, became more and more numerous. The Hippocratic collection contains a special treatise (_De officina medici_), which speaks of the conditions these places were expected to fulfil, the articles therein to be contained, the instruments, the general rules relative to operations, the bandages, etc. About six hundred years later, Galen wrote three books of commentaries on this treatise of Hippocrates. He says, among other things, that the doctor’s shop ought to be spacious and furnished with wide openings, to let in abundance of light. These medical stations to which the sick and infirm repaired in great numbers to ask advice, to undergo operations, or receive medical dressings, must have been of great importance, as is to be presumed from the cited books of Hippocrates and Galen. The greatest doctors of antiquity practised the medical art in these places. It is also said that the great philosopher and naturalist, Aristotle, who came of a race of doctors, had inherited a doctor’s shop of great value, but that notwithstanding this he refused to dedicate himself to the medical profession.