As some of you will know,
one of my New Year's Resolutions this year was to go to the dentist.
I have a terror of the dentist (masked man, drills etc.), so I'd been
putting it off for a number of years. Now I've finally been to the
dentist and discovered I need a lot of dental work, but at least I'm
getting the opportunity to finally get over my fear of the dentist.
In the spirit of having
completed my final root canal, and in (psychological) preparation for
the many, many fillings, let us consider dentistry in this week's Fun
Friday Facts.
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And let us give thanks for modern anesthetics. |
1) Researchers from the
University of Poitiers have discovered evidence that the practice of dentistry dates back 9,000 years. These early dentists lived in the
Indus Valley Civilization in modern day Pakistan. They used
flint-tipped drills to remove areas of decay from teeth. It's
believed that the earliest dentists were bead artisans, who would
have been skilled in the use of these small, sharp drills.
The eleven Neolithic teeth,
discovered in 2006, did not appear to have fillings, but the
technique appears to have been effective anyway. Signs of wear around
the edges of the holes suggest that the owners of the teeth were
alive at the time of the procedure, and that they continued to use
the teeth afterward.
2) The first known dentist
was an Egyptian called Hesi-Re, who lived about 5,000 years ago. The
inscriptions on his tomb indentify him as “the greatest of those
who deal with teeth.” Most ancient Egyptians weren't prone to cavities, due to the low levels of sugar in their diet, although
members of the upper classes were vulnerable to and often died from
tooth decay. Ancient Egyptians ate a lot of sand mixed in with their
food (it gets everywhere), which caused excessive wear and tear on
the teeth, and often led to early tooth loss. The ancient Egyptians
used prosthetic teeth, which were fastened into the mouth with gold
wire, and filled cavities with a mixture of resin and chrysocolla, a
type of copper ore.
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Pretty. ~ Rob Lavinsky |
3) In spite of all their
orthodontic technology, the ancient Egyptians didn't practice tooth
extraction. They believed that it wasn't necessary, a belief that
probably caused many unnecessary deaths. The first dental extraction
tool appeared in the 1300s, in France, the work of Guy de Chauliac.
It was pair of forceps called the “dental pelican” because its
business end somewhat resembled the beak of a pelican, if you
squinted just right.
4) Later, in the 1700s, the dental key appeared.
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Actually, I think that one in the middle left is a dental pelican. |
The dental key had a set of
claws on the end of its shaft. In order to pull a tooth, the
erstwhile dentist (barber) inserted the shaft into the mouth and then
tightened the claws around the tooth in question. Rotating the dental key was supposed to loosen and remove the tooth, but it usually just
broke the tooth, the teeth around it, and sometimes the jawbone.
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Let's give thanks for anesthetic again. |
5) Real dentists began to appear in the 1700s, but they were expensive, because some things
never change. Most people were stuck with the local blacksmith, who
could do little more than pull troublesome teeth, while of course
simultaneously breaking your jaw and probably ushering in your
premature death from infection. False teeth, made from ivory, or, in
some cases, human teeth stolen from dead bodies, were a popular
cause of oral hauntings. George Washington's teeth were not
wooden, but were made of lead, gold, ivory, animal and human teeth.
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This picture is complete bullsh*t. |
6) Porcelain dentures
appeared in 1820. London goldsmith Claudius Ash mounted the first
sets of porcelain teeth in gold plates. In the 1850s, vulcanized
rubber replaced the gold plates, making dentures affordable and
mass-producible for the first time. Acrylic resin and plastic dentures appeared in the
20th century.
7) Dental and surgical
anesthetics appeared in the 1840s.
Horaaaaay! |
This, combined with the
institution of dental schools and government regulations for
orthodontic practitioners, dentistry became safer and less
frightening, although, you know, still pretty frightening.
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It must be an ancestral memory. |