A day in the 17th century in England, a woman had problems with one of its upper canines. As a result, that she had extracted – the treatment go – to for a bad tooth at the time. But out of the tooth of the problem did not help, and soon she noticed (brace yourself) pus coming from the hole where his teeth used to be. It was deeply gross, but it got worse from there.
Understand Congestion Sinus
Trying to find the source of the problem, the enterprising woman turned to foreign objects – a pencil and a pen – to find out where his teeth had been. Shortly after, she was rushing to a doctor, insisting that she had stabbed just his own brain.
Fortunately for her, especially doctor who happened to know exactly what was going on. Not many doctors of the 17th century have been clued in anatomical structures that allow someone insert something long and thin in a cell and surprisingly far up in the skull. But Nathaniel Highmore was so knowledgeable about what the anatomy in question was named for him.
Understand Congestion Sinus
In other words: our dental patient was certainly not his brain with a feather touch. She had been poking around in the den of Highmore, better known these days as the maxillary sinus – a cavity filled with air for most in the skull, next to the nose. To help him understand the situation, Highmore even showed her some of his anatomical drawings detailed.
For decades, it was thought that Highmore was the first to make accurate anatomical drawings of the maxillary sinus. Then in 1901, the scientific drawings of Leonardo da Vinci were discovered, researchers have learned that the great artist had made a very accurate picture of the sinuses in question a hundred years before Highmore.
Even though no one had put these pretty pictures of the front sinuses da Vinci and Highmore, people knew about them since thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians seem to have been aware of them thanks to their inclination to remove the brains of the dead through their noses during the mummification process. Mind you, they probably do not have use the maxillary sinus for this tour de force, but rather the ethmoid one [source: Mavrodi and Paraskevas]. It is true, that there are several types of sinus. There are actually four major sinuses: maxillary, ethmoid, frontal and sphenoid.
So we have some holes in our heads, and when we walk through the sinus-related, they can make our teeth hurt. Interesting. But why? What is the purpose of having a network of pockets of air-filled in the bones of the human head?
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