title: Driving out the 'toothworm' in today's China.
abstract: For thousands of years people have tried to explain toothache as the result of a worm residing in a carious tooth. Fumigation of the carious tooth, with the smoke from burning henbane or leek seeds, was used to drive the "toothworm" out of the tooth. A quack in modern China adopted the same ruse and supposedly drove the worms out of student's tooth. This duplicitous procedure was captured on film by a dentist who witnessed it.
authors.forename: T L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Ring
mesh_terms: D003731:Dental Caries / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional / Q000266:history*; D011781:Quackery / Q000266:history*; D013624:Taiwan; D014098:Toothache / Q000266:history*