Tes iatrikes kartos, or, A treatise de morborum capitis essentiis & pronosticis adorned with above three hundred choice and rare observations ... / by Robert Bayfield ...

CAP. CXIX. De Dentium Nigredine.

DEntium Nigredo, Blackness of the teeth, proceedeth from filthy vapours that flie upwards, and are ingendred of evill nourish∣ment, or from the distemper of the stomack, which corrupteth good nutriment.

Quò ad dealbationem, mundationem, preserva∣tionemque dentium ab omni sorditie, Spiritus sul∣phuris aut vitrioli maximé ab omnibus commen∣datur. Montanus reports, that he learned that at Rome, of a Woman called Greek Mary: to whom when he came when he was young, and she twenty years old, and after when she was fifty, he found her almost in the same condition, and she confessed that her beauty and strength was preserved by the Spirit of Vitriol, and that her teeth which were very bad in her youth, were by that made very fair and firm, and also her gums; and also that she perceived her self by the use thereof to seem more youthful, and

she used every day one drop or two to rub gent∣ly her teeth and gums.

In a great foulness you may use the oyles by themselves, dipping therein a little stick, and rubbing the teeth with the end thereof, and then wiping them with a clout; otherwise you must mix them with Honey of Roses, or fair water, ne usu frequenti gingivas erodat.

Cinis Nicotianae ad dentes abstergendos & de-albandos est etiam mirè efficax.

It is observable, that those Women which use Mercury to make them fair, have always black and ill-coloured teeth. Next follow the Affects of the Gums.