“Simple food is very beneficial to man; the variety of flavors instead is very harmful. Sour or too abundant foods are digested with difficulty, and also those which are ravenously swallowed. As a remedy, vomiting has come into use; but it makes the body cold and is most pernicious to the eyes and to the teeth.” There is no doubt that the habit of often provoking vomitus—which, in those times of excessive corruption and intemperance, had come into general use—must have resulted in enormous harm to the teeth, especially by the action exercised upon them by the hydrochloric acid contained in the gastric juice, and by the organic acids of fermentation. Among the vegetable remedies in those times considered of use against odontalgia, the principal ones are mentioned in Chapter CV of Book XXV: “It is beneficial against toothache to chew the root of panax, and likewise to wash the teeth with its juice. It is also useful to chew the root of hyoscyamus soaked in vinegar, or else that of the polemonium. It is also beneficial to chew the roots of the plantain, or to wash the teeth in a decoction of plantain in vinegar. A decoction of the leaves is also useful, not only in the case of simple toothache, but also when the gums are tender and easily bleed. The seed of the same plant cures inflammations and abscesses of the gums. The aristolochia strengthens the gums and the teeth. The same effect may be produced by masticating the verbena with its root, or by washing the mouth with a decoction of it in wine or vinegar. Similarly the roots of the cinquefoil are helpful when boiled down to a third, in wine or vinegar; however, they must first be washed in salt water or brine. The decoction must be kept for a long time in the mouth. “Instead of using the decoction of cinquefoil, some prefer to rub the loose teeth with the ashes of this plant. Besides the above-mentioned remedies, the root of the verbascum boiled in wine, hyssop, and the juice of the peucedanum with opium are also employed; and it is also beneficial to pour into the nostrils, on the side opposite to that of the sick tooth, some drops of the juice of anagallis. “It is said that if senecio be taken from the earth, and the aching tooth be touched three times with it, spitting alternatively three times, and then the herb be replanted in the same spot, so that it may continue to live, the tooth will never give pain any more.”[131] “In the fuller’s thistle,[132] an herb which grows near rivers, is found a small worm, which has the power of curing dental pains, when the said worm is killed by rubbing it on the teeth, or when it is closed up with wax in the hollow teeth.”[133] “Apollonius writes that a very efficacious remedy for pains in the gums is to scratch them with the tooth of a man who has suffered a violent death.”[134]