ways but that I may render what I have to say upon it as perspicuous and intelligible as I can I think it very convenient we should take a special notice of the vessels that come into the Tooth and of their respective Functions The first and chiefest whereof is an Artery whose Office is to bring directly from the heart that hot and spirituous blood out of which although it is not the general Opinion the Tooth is at first made as well as the rest of the whole body and ever after preserved and repaired by the supply of nourishment and vital principles it affords continually To this effect the whole Artery divides it self into an infinity of small branches which being disseminated throughout the whole substance of the Tooth distribute to each part as much of their blood as is necessary to make up the incessant loss they are subject to and the rest is returned through innumerable hair-like veins into the great ones and thence to the heart again but in two different manners for the superfluous part of that portion of the blood that is carried by the Capillary Arteries to that part of the Tooth standing above the Gums is sent back again through some Capillary veins towards the middle of the Tooth where uniting together they make but a single channel and this is it we commonly call the vein of the Tooth which we shall here take for its second vessel But the remainder of the blood that goes to the relief of that part of the Tooth that is within the Gums passing quite through the substance of the Tooth is carried by the Capillary veins to the veins of the Gums Checks and Lips and hence it is that whatever pain is at any time occasioned in any of those parts either by bruise excessive heat or cold c. comes to be soon after communicated to the Teeth The Third and Last Vessel of the Teeth is a Nerve one of the extremities whereof is expanded through the Membrane that invests the cavity of the Tooth and that that contains its Vessels and the other is rooted in the Brain from whence it takes its Origine and where the Animal Spirits being elaborated are thence sent by the Nerves to all the parts of the body to administer sense and the cause of motion to them c. although in some as the Teeth the faculty of motion is not exercised From this consideration of the Vessels of the Tooth we may gather the following reasons of its Dolour As first that if either through the too great quantity or ebulition of the blood the Artery is so dilated and swoln that it fills up the hole at the end of the stumps where it enters the Tooth and consequently so compresses the vein going out the same way that the circulation of the Blood is thereby hindred the continual flowing in of the blood will extremely puff up and distend the membrane that contains the vessels and consequently cause a great pain in the Tooth which will last till either the preternatural state of the Blood be changed or that the Arteriols which we have said to pass quite through the rooty part of the Tooth be so stretched and widened that by them the Blood may be discharged into the Gums Cheeks and Lips where it will then cause a swelling greater or lesser according to the quantity of the superfluous Blood And if at the beginning of this disorder when the Vein is first impeded in its Function the motion of the Blood is so rapid and its influx into the Tooth so impetuous that before it can make its way through the small Arterial Twigs into the Gums it does extremely extend the coats of the Artery the Interstices between their Fibres will thereby become wide enough to give passage to some of the thinnest parts of the Blood which gathering at the end of the root between the outside of the Artery and the common Coat investing all the Vessels will there putrifie and cause a great and very lasting pain in the Tooth during which if the Tooth be drawn the said gathering will appear at the end of its stump like a little Bladder You shall know this sort of Tooth-Ake by the high beating of your Pulse the fulness of the Veins and an often beating in the affected Tooth with a continual tho not very extreme pain And then for the Cure of it you must first bleed the Gums and sometimes open a Vein in the Arm also and wash your mouth with Rose-water and Vinegar of each equal quantities mixt together putting a little Cotton dipt in Oyl of Box into the Tooth if it be hollow Furthermore if that portion of the Blood which is diffused through the substance of the Brain for the production of the Animal Spirits is so depraved that all the sifting it receives through the hidden meanders and recesses of the Brain cannot clear it from its impurities and that notwithstanding all the contrivances of Nature it is deposited into the ventricles of the Brain tho under another form yet still impregnated with its ill qualities such sort of Animal Spirits being compounded of Heterogeneous parts if not timely discharged of their malignant and offensive Corpuscles through the usual Emunctories will either by their fermentation in the Ventricles of the Brain cause an Head-ake or by the oppilation of its pores cause a giddiness or else passing out of the Brain into the Nerves will by their irregular motion and preternatural extention of the coats of the Nerves and other Tunicles breed a disturbance in all the parts they go to but more particularly in the Teeth in which they always excite very great pains For discharging the peccant humour between the membrane that invests the inside of the Tooth and that that incloses its vessels it occasions a perpetual torment in them till it be expelled from thence by transpiration This second kind of Tooth-ake will be known by a disturbance in the head which precedes it most commonly a soreness in the joynts and a certain drousiness and lingring pain all over the body as if one were inclined to an Ague with a sharp and very excessive pain in the distempered Tooth which comes by fits soon ceasing and often beginning a-new As for its Cure it may be effected by Sternutation the friction of the nape of the Neck with warm clothes and the application of aperitive Remedies to open the pores of the Tooth and if it be hollow you shall put in 't a drop of Oyl of Camphire whereinto has been infused some Henbane-root These are the two general causes of the Tooth-ake all the rest proceeding from them some few excepted There is what I had a mind to say at this present concerning the Tooth-ake But you must note further that as it is not enough for one that intends to travel a Countrey over to understand the Map of that Countrey but he must also inquire often of the people he meets with as he goes
Philosopher attributed the said effect to the Pulsifick Faculty of the heart which in his opinion communicates it self to the Arteries Both which opinions altho propos'd by extraordinary men yet are so inconsiderable that they need no refutation The most Learned and most Profound Cartesius was of opinion that the Beating of the Pulse proceeded from the motion of the Bloud which coming out of the lest Ventricle of the Heart into the Aorta in a tumultuous manner extends it self forcibly and thereby drives all the mass of the Bloud from the heart to the heart again according to the Circulation of the Bloud After which this great Man who would always give natural and intelligible reasons for every thing as he has done for most coming at the instigation of a Physitian of Louvaine to examine Galen's Experiment he attributed the cessation of the Pulse that happens below the ligature to the narrowness of the passage of the Bloud through the Quill which Bloud according to the principles of the Philotopher coming out of the said Quill into a wider space cannot communicate its action to the sides of the Artery but is disposed to imploy the force of its motion forwards according to the length of the Artery But the said Physitian alledging against this that if one takes an Artery without Quill or any Incision and ties its sides so close together that there be left a far smaller passage for the Bloud in that place than in the Quill the Artery will nevertheless continue still to Beat on both sides of the ligature as it did before the contrary of which wou'd necessarily follow if it were so that the straitness of the passage of the Bloud did occasion the loss of the Pulse Cartesius was here forced to recede somewhat from his former Sentiment and to confess that the motion of the Arteries depends partly upon the free continuation of their coats which totally overthrows his opinion For let the power of the said continuation be what it will supposing as the Philosopher did that its action may be stopt by the compression of the sides of the Artery It is certain that altho the Quill in the Artery were of equal or if you will greater capacity than the Artery yet if the said Artery were tied upon it the Pulse would notwithstanding all that cease below the ligature But Cartesius said that such a Quill as that we were speaking of just now being in an Artery either tied or untied wou'd never hinder any part of the Artery from Beating And therefore c. Doctor Lower says after many Disquisitions on this Subject that the knowledge of those things was left to God alone Doctor Willis ascribes the Beating of the Pulse to the contraction of the circular Fibres of the muscular coat of the Artery But it is absurd to think so for its impossible to imagine that those Fibres cou'd contract themselves of their own accord neither does the Doctor give any reason for what he says Besides he 's inconsistent with himself when he ascribes the same motions to the circular Fibres of the muscular coat of the veins which are notwithstanding wholly destitute of any Pulsation c. All which considering and how these and other great men had through the difficulty of the thing and not out of any insufficiency in them fallen into so gross and so erroneous opinions concerning the Point in Question I concluded that it was as good as impossible ever to solve the difficulty Yet recollecting my self and seeing that the said Effect must have a cause whatever it be which probably cannot reside any where else but either in the Heart Bloud or coats of the Artery or finally in them all together I made a resolution to examine carefully each one of these things separately as possibly containing alone the cause sought after and then all together as being possibly Coadjutors in the production of the known Effect And after as exact an Inquiry into the matter as I am capable of my Reasons which wou'd be too tedious to tell you now perswade me that all the Mystery consists in the three following things The First is the Structure of the Artery which is made up of four Coats We shall examine in another place how they are generated at first The first of them which contains the Bloud immediately seems to be nervous and made of strait Fibres which take their Origine from the heart or rather are a continuation of those that immediately invest the cavity of the heart As soon as they are arriv'd at the orifice of the heart they rank themselves by one another forming a certain Cartilagineous Ring from the circumference of which they run almost parallel along the Artery but yet with such an inclination towards one another that going from the heart to the extreme parts they form a kind of Cone for that we may render our Discourse more intelligible we shall consider here one of the trunks of the great Artery suppose the ascending one as a continued right Conical Pipe abstracting from all its divisions and branches to every one of which may easily be apply'd what we are going to say of one of them a little below the Apex of which those Fibres unite themselves together and do compose a little tendinous ring called Anastomosis to which is affix'd the extremity of the vena cava which vein we shall suppose here to be a single conical channel or pipe disposed as we have taken the Artery to be Within this Anastomosis there is a little Valve so dispos'd that it permits the bloud to pass from the Artery into the vein but hinders it from returning back again from the vein into the Artery Between every one of those nervous Fibres there is a thin membrane that joyns them together as the skin in a Goose'sfoot ties its toes to one another which permits the said Fibres to open and go further from one another when the Artery is dilated And which do continually increase in breath as they go from the Anastomosis to the basis of the Artery so that they become so conspicuous near the heart that Doctor Willis took them for some large fleshy Fibres to which he assign'd the faculty of shortning the Artery in order to promote the circulation of the Bloud The second coat is the Muscular and the third the Glandulous but the consideration of these middle coats being not necessary to our present purpose we shall speak of them another time As to the fourth or outmost Coat it is that which we have most need to take notice of here as being the principal Instrument of the Systole and Diastole of the Artery This Coat is made up of two orders or ranks of spiral Fibres which proceed from the oblique Fibres of the heart from whence they go twisting and winding themselves about the body of the Artery as Ivy does about Trees some running upon it from the left to the right and the others from
in such manner that as much of the spirit as is necessary to fill up the spaces left between the parts of the dilated bloud is sent thither from between the parts of that which is compressed the remnant of the spirit being equally distributed through the rest of the artery so that if every one of the four parts or divisions of the artery contains a certain quantity of vital spirit distinguished into three parts and that three of those parts do pass from A B into X A two of them will in the same instant pass from B C into A B and one from C Y into B C in which action consists the ebbing or systole of the artery And as a rope or more sensibly a gut-string which is fixed to any place being pulled with a jerk will draw back again him that drew it at first so likewise the spiral Fibres being extended violently and on a sudden upon the dilatation of the artery do come back again instantaneously by reason that some of the parts of each Fibre being strongly thrusted towards its middle and somewhat bent from its circumference towards its centre do presently spring back again extending themselves according to the bredth of the Fibre whereby the said Fibre is necessarily as much shortned as it had been stretch'd before and restitute themselves into their former situation tone which they are facilitated to do by the extenuation of that extraordinary agitation of the bloud which it communicates in an instant to the yielding sides of the artery forcing thereby three parts of the vital spirit or subtil matter to repass from X A to A B and the two parts that were already in A B to pass into B C from whence another will pass into C Y c. which makes the flowing or Diastole of the artery I foresee an Objection that some may make against what we have said that that portion of the bloud that comes out of the heart in its Diastole is dilated and yet occupies no more of the artery than if it were condensed only that part of the artery which contains it is a little more extended than the rest for they will say this supposes that both the artery and the vein are always full of bloud being certain that if the bloud in coming out of the heart into the great artery did find there any empty space where it might expand it self freely it would start forwards into it and then it wou'd not dilate the artery nor by consequence draw the spiral Fibres and therefore there wou'd neither be Systole nor Diastole in the artery But it is most certain they will continue that men have sometimes more and sometimes less bloud in their bodies and that if a man has for example fifteen ounces of bloud drawn it will follow that there being a vacuity in the Sanguiducts till the same quantity of bloud be regenerated a-new the Beating of the Pulse must also cease till then which being contradicted by daily experience they will conclude that the motion of the spiral Fibres with whatever else we have taught concerning the Beating of the Pulse is altogether chimerical To which I answer in few words that for the Beating of the Pulse and Circulation of the Bloud it matters not at all whether or no the artery and vein be quite full of bloud since that as the bloud decreases in them the muscles of the limbs and other adjacent parts do proportionably compress them round about so that their internal superficies touches the bloud continually every way which has the same effect as if the artery and vein were exactly full of bloud for the bloud coming out of the heart and finding as much difficulty in lifting up the adjacent parts as to drive on the bloud of the artery and vein when they are full on 't it 's forced to keep the same order and method in that case as it does in this concerning its dilatation and place in the artery Now these being the true and genuine reasons of the Diastole and Systole of the arteries it 's very easy thereby to explain all the Phenomena relating to Galen's experiment For the Quill being put into the artery and left there without being tied the artery will nevertheless beat still above and below the Quill as it did before because that the spiral Fibres can still play to and fro from one end of the artery to the other without impediment But if you bind the sides of the artery upon the Quill the motion of the same spiral Fibres will be intercopted by the ligature so that it must necessarily follow by the foregoing reasons that the artery being not alternatively compressed and dilated betwixt the said ligature and the extremity the Pulse must also cease in that part of the said artery c. Many things may easily be explained by this Doctrine tho impossible to be interpreted any otherwise which therefore become as many proofs of its verity as namely the difference which is between the arterial and venal bloud For having demonstrated above that when the bloud advances in the great artery from the heart towards the anastomosis and from thence into the vein the vital spirit goes in the very same time from the anastomosis towards the heart whereby the said spirit is necessarily kept within the artery it is certain that this disparity proceeds from the want of spirit in the venal to keep its parts in agitation which abounding in the arterial keeps it in a continual effervency c. I cou'd add many other things to authorize what we have said concerning the Beating of the Pulse and Circulation of the Bloud but I hope this will suffice to rational men and such as are of a Mechanical Genius As for those that attribute all things to final causes and have recourse upon every occasion to the designs and intentions of Nature as when they say that the Eye-brows are made to hinder the Sweat from falling into the eyes c. if notwithstanding all that we can do they remain still insensible to our reasons it matters not much and in my opinion such persons had a great deal better study Astrology or if they are big with devotion go and comment upon Job or Paraphrase some Psalms than meddle with Physical matters FINIS THE CONTENTS Section I. Of the Nature of the Teeth Page 7 Sect. II. Of the Alteration of the Teeth p. 11 Sect. III. Of the Corruption of the Teeth with their Remedies p. 15 The Description and Vse of the Polican p. 17 Sect. IV. Of the Restauration of the Teeth p. 19 Sect. V. Of the Tooth-ake Looseness of the Teeth and decay of the Gums with their Remedies p. 22 Sect. VI. Of Childrens Teeth p. 31 Sect. VII Of the Acceleration of the Teeth p. 37 Advertisement to the Readers p. 44 A Physical Dicourse concerning the Beating of the Pulse and Circulation of the Bloud p. 45 The Explication p. 52