Chap. 15.] OF THE TEETH, ETC. ^ 153 
CHAP. 14. THE THEOEY 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- 
CEENING 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 happened 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 milk 
becomes tainted." Hardouin remarks, that Pliny shoAvs 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 IL, 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. 
96 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 difi'erent order, the 
lower ones appearing before the upper. — B. 
9^ Hardouin mentions a number of authors who relate cases of this 
nature. It is said to have taken place with our king Bichard III. See 
Shakespeare, Ptichard III., Act i. Scene 4. An individual of very different 
character and fortune, Louis XIV., is said to have been born with two teeth 
in the upper jaw. — Be 
