Around 300,000 years ago, the homo rhodesiensis species showed signs of extreme wear on their teeth. Their tuff diet and near-chronic abscesses were just one step on the long road from dental evolution to modern humans. But it would take a few hundred thousand years for dentists to appear. Around 7000 BC. With the civilization of the Indus Valley, we begin to see some of the first evidence of early dentists practising their profession. This comes in the form of holes drilled in the teeth, presumably to remove cavities/decay. This drilling technology most likely came in the form of the bow drill, a fairly crude mechanical tool, but effective nonetheless. It is thought that bead making was the primary occupation of these early dentists who probably made house calls, although this was probably not a pleasant experience.
Around 5000 BC in southern Mesopotamia, the Sumerians wrote
down a key concept related to teeth. There is a text describing the cause of
toothache and tooth decay. They believe such things happened because of the
tooth worm. The tooth worm was taken very seriously. Around 700 BC. In the
Assyrian city of Nineveh, possibly suffering from a toothache, wrote an
invocation against the tooth worm. It deplores the nature of the worms and begs
the gods to strike it down. The concept of the tooth worm was widely accepted
until the early 18th century. Practitioners would even yank at nerves thinking
them worms until the idea was challenged by Pierre Fauchard, we'll get back to
him.
They developed early recipes for toothpaste that crushed
burnt oxen hooves, eggshells, and myrrh, and even used opium as a pain
reliever. However, they also believed that touching an aching tooth with a dead
mouse could cure pain. Some evidence for ancient dentistry is indirect. Around
1800 BC, King Hammurabi's code states that bad physicians and dentists can be
punished by having a hand removed. In Italy in the 8th century BC, before Rome
really started roaming, the Etruscans flourished. This fascinating Iron Age
culture developed false teeth using human or animal teeth held together with
gold bands. And similar appliances held loose teeth in place.
What about the Saxons and Vikings of the latter first
millennium AD in northern Europe? Well, contrary to popular imagery, they
tended to have very good teeth. This is due to a relative lack of sugar in
their diets. Although a Viking skull found in 2009 in Dorset has grooves filed
into his two front teeth, probably to add to the ferocity of its appearance.
Around the same time in China during the Tang Dynasty, they
probably developed the first toothbrushes using hog bristles. And in 1223, the
Japanese Zen master Dogen recorded that he saw monks in China clean their
teeth with brushes made from horsetail hair attached to an ox bone handle. And
it would be 1690 centuries before Anthony Wood buy a toothbrush in Europe. In
the intervening years during the early Middle Ages in Europe, sciences such as
medicine, surgery, and dentistry were generally practised by monks. However, a
series of 12th-century papal edicts expressly prohibited monks from performing
any form of surgery. So dental care was no longer the purview of educated
monks, but rather their less-educated assistants (the people who shaved the
heads of monks). Barber surgeons were let loose on the public performing
extractions.
Just at the time when sugar was becoming increasingly
popular in Europe, the great medieval surgeon Abu al-Qasim al Zawahri inspired
European surgeons and in the 14th-century people like the celiac guide invented
the dental pelican. Resembling the beaks of a pelican, dentists still use a
similar tool for extractions today. Dental care at that time was highly
dependent on status in society. Barber surgeons continue to practice among the
lower classes and try to stick with extractions and attempts to relieve pain.
In the 16th century, dental care has changed little. A Tudor
dentist would be a painful experience. According to the Tudor dentist, boiled
frogs were a staple and foul concoctions were applied to rotten teeth to
encourage them to fall out. There was an attempt to clean using frayed tea
twigs that would be rubbed on the teeth with a paste made from rose water,
lavender, and cuttlefish. And in 1530 the first textbook on dentistry in Germany
was published.
At the end of the Tudor period, Shakespeare makes a casual
reference to teeth cleaning in a play. But barber-surgeons continue to practice
their trade, if not a barber-surgeon, they can be a juggler followed by a tooth
extracted to thrill the crowd.
The seventeenth century saw the French physician Pierre
Fauchard lay the foundations for modern dentistry. He discarded concepts such
as the tooth worm and published a book “the surgeon dentist”. One concession to
former ways was the use of urine as a mouthwash. But among its many novelties
with a cleaning, separation, removal of cavities, cauterization, filling,
straightening and strengthening of teeth and the claim that sugar caused
cavities.
The first dental textbook written in English was Charles
Allen's "Operator for the teeth" in 1685. And in the 1700s in
Georgian England, dentistry was finding its feet as a profession. There were
many developments, although some practices continued to include, yes, the use
of urine as a mouthwash. A new practice was the use of gunpowder to clean teeth.
They also used red-hot wires to cauterize the patients' nerve endings. Fillings
were an exciting development, although you are filling the choice with
poisonous lead or beeswax which is the Neolithic solution.
Georgians also developed porcelain fillings, although
unfortunately, the lovely white filling would tend to kill the tooth around it. If
the tooth had to be stripped, there was always the possibility of a replacement
carved from ivory or walrus tusks. Now many people seem to think that George
Washington had false teeth made of wood, this is not true, and they were
actually made with his own teeth, cow teeth and hippo ivory. Unfortunately,
they were set in a metal mouthpiece with springs that fitted poorly and
distorted the shape of his mouth.
In the late 1700s, the English prisoner William Addis is
believed to have developed the first mass-produced toothbrush. In his cell, he
was unhappy with simply rubbing a rag on his teeth. He saved a small bone from
a prison meal, obtained bristles from a goat, drilled holes in the bone, glued
them together, and there is a toothbrush.
After his release, Addis became very wealthy. During The 1800s, the first dental schools were opened with the oral health industry and a
requirement for raw materials for a prosthesis emerged. Before porcelain teeth
were perfected for dentures, they were usually extracted from the mouths
of dead soldiers, often soldiers who fought in the American Civil War. They
were used nationally and shipped worldwide by barrels.
The 19th century also saw the development of toothpaste in jars. And in 1892 dr. Connecticut's Washington Sheffield was the first to put toothpaste in a collapsible tube. Urine-based pastes were no longer the only option, so the world of oral health and dentistry as we know it today began to take shape in the early 1900s.
This story sounds like progress, although recent research
shows that over the past 10,000 years reduced diets and the pursuit of oral
health have reduced the spectrum of bacteria in the mouth and have surprisingly
contributed to chronic disease. Despite that, our summary of the archaeology of
dentists has certainly given me a new perspective. My dentist is well trained,
they work in a clean hygienic environment. Heck, I can brush my teeth with
toothpaste, I don't have to rely on stale urine.
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