The concept of a tooth-worm, which according to popular belief, caused caries and periodontitis, has existed in diverse cultures and across the ages. During the Enlightenment, however, the theory of the tooth-worm was assigned by medical doctors almost exclusively to superstition. Even so, the idea
Evidence of herbal, animal, and chemical substances from the natural world used in medicines for otolaryngological problems, including opium, hyoscyamus, barley, honey, dried beans and peas, olives, fruits, Agaricus, castoreum, cassia, and afronitron, was traced in the Byzantine medical treatises,