Chap. 15.] OF THE TEETH, ETC. 153 



CHAP. 14. THE THEORY OF GENEEATION. 



Conception is generally said to take place the most readily, 

 either at the beginning or the end of the menstrual discharge.'-" 

 It is said, too, that it is a certain sign of fecundity in a woman, 

 when her saliva becomes impregnated with any medicament 

 which has been rubbed upon her eye-lids.^^ 



CHAP. 15. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE TEETH, AND SOME FACTS CON- 



CEKNING INFANTS. 



It is a matter beyond doubt, that in young children the 

 front teeth are produced at the seventh month, and, nearly al- 

 ways, those in the upper jaw the first. These are shed in the 

 seventh year, and are then replaced by others. ^^ Some infants 

 are even born with teeth :^' such was the case with Manius 

 Curius, who, from this circumstance, received the name of 

 Dentatus ; and also with Cn. Papirius Carbo, both of them dis- 

 tinguished men. When this phenomenon hapi)ened in the case 

 of a female, it was looked upon in the time of the kings as an 

 omen of some inauspicious event. At the birth of Valeria, 

 under such circumstances as these, it was the answer of the 



"that if women while giving suck, have sexual intercourse, the miik 

 becotnes tainted." Hardouin remarks, that Pliny shows considerable caution 

 here in bringing forward Nigidius as the propounder of these opinions, the 

 truth of which he himself seems to have doubted. 



^' It is generally admitted, that the female is more disposed to conceive 

 just after the cessation of each periodical discharge. "We are informed by 

 the French historians, that their king, Henry II., and his wife Catharine, 

 having been childless eleven years, made a successful experiment of this 

 description, by the advice of the physician Fernel ; see Lemaire, vol. iii. 

 p. 83.— B. 



^^ This is one of the many idle tales referred to by Pliny, entirely with- 

 out foundation. — B. 



^" This account is correct, to the extent that the first teeth that appear 

 are the two central incisors of the upper jaw ; the next are the two lower 

 central incisors, then the upper lateral incisors, the lower lateral incisors, 

 and the upper and lower canines. The molars follow a different order, the 

 lower ones appearing before the upper. — B. 



^ Hardouin mentions a number of authors who relate cases of this 

 nature. It is said to have taken place with our king Richard III. See 

 Shakespeare, Richard III., Act i. Scene 4. An iiidividuul of very different 

 character and fortune, Louis XIV., is said to have been born with two teeth 

 in the upper jaw. — B. 



