Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 118, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1915 — Classic Toothache. [ARTICLE]

Classic Toothache.

Toothache was not an incident ol campaigning with which ancient armies had to reckon. The silencfe of the classics certainly seems to indicate that the Greeks and Romans suffered very little from their teeth. Words for toothache and for teeth extracting instruments can, indeed, be found in the Greek and Latin dictionaries, but the authors quoted for them are generally late and always uninteresting. We can hardly believe that, if toothache had been common in Athens, Aristophanes would have made no jokes about it But a classical scholar may pretty safely be defied to -cite a single Greek or Latin passage about it Even Lucretius, when he gets on to the subject of teeth in a passage where a reference to- toothache might be expected, merely refers to the jar given to the teeth by very cold water or by biting a stone in one’s bread.