Note (44) — CANTO FIFTH.

“These sympathetic pains arising from carious teeth, proceed from the intimate connection that subsists between the branches of the fifth and those of the seventh pair of nerves. The pain in the ear is therefore sympathetic, arising from disease in the dens sapientiæ. From the connexion which subsists between these two pairs of nerves, it happens that not only inflammation in the teeth causes a sympathetic pain in the ears, but disagreeable and unharmonious sounds produce a sympathetic effect upon the teeth, and occasion that unpleasant sensation called the teeth being set on edge.” (Fox on the Teeth, Part II. p. 31.)

“The sympathetic affections to which the tooth-ache gives rise, are exceedingly various and important; though it is only of late years they have been properly understood, and the attention of medical men directed to their true source. It not unfrequently happens, that parts the most remote become the apparent seat of pain, from the exposure of the nerve of a tooth. I have seen this occur, not only in the face, over the scalp, in the ear, or underneath the lower jaw, but down the neck, over the shoulder, and along the whole length of the arm.” (Bell on the Teeth, p. 155.)