As the art of setting artificial teeth was exercised by persons not belonging to the medical profession, it is very probable that these persons also undertook the extraction of teeth and the cure of dental pains. Martial (Book X, Epigram LVI) names a certain Cascellius, who, he says, “extracts or cures diseased teeth,”[170] and this is the first dentist whose name has been sent down to us. In spite of this, nothing permits us to affirm that there existed at that time a class of real dentists, viz., of persons dedicated to the exclusive cure of dental disease. There are strong reasons for doubting this, especially when we consider that the Latin language has no word corresponding to the word dentist. If there had existed a true dental profession, there ought also to have existed a name for indicating the individuals who exercised it. Therefore, it must be considered highly probable that, although there undoubtedly existed individuals who were especially skilled in the cure of the diseases of the teeth, such persons did not form a special class; perhaps, among those to whom recourse was had for the cure of dental diseases, some were doctors, particularly skilled in such diseases, others were perhaps barbers, and so forth. As to the far-fetched deductions of Geist-Jacobi, according to whom the name given to dentists by the Romans must have been that of _artifex dentium_ or _artifex medicus dentium_, these are founded, above all, on imagination. It is extremely improbable that such names existed, when one considers that they are not met with, even once, in the whole range of Latin literature. SCRIBONIUS LARGUS. Among the writers on Medicine in the early period of the Empire, one of the most eminent was, without any doubt, Scribonius Largus, physician to the Emperor Claudius, whom he accompanied to England in the year 43. Scribonius Largus, in his book _De compositione medicamentorum_, pronounces himself energetically against the division of Medicine into single special branches. He declaims against the many who attributed to themselves the name of doctors, simply because they knew how to cure some diseases. According to him, the true doctor must be skilled in curing all kinds of affections. This, in truth, was possible in those times, but would be almost impossible nowadays, on account of the enormous development of the healing art. The ideas, however, expressed by Scribonius Largus have a certain historical importance, for they show that in his times the medical art had certainly the tendency to split up into many special branches, among which there must certainly have been dentistry, but that the necessity of such separation was not by any means universally recognized; the great doctors of those days undertook the cure of the diseases of the teeth, as well as those of any other part of the body.