Babylonia 700 BCE
A man begins a recitation, praying for relief from his toothache. To banish this pain
He recites the history of the creature that afflicts him: the worm went weeping before the Sun God
His tears flowing before the God of the Void
"What will thou give me for food?" he cries
"What will thou give me for sucking?" the gods offer fruit
but he turns away. "What use are me the ripe fig and
Apricot? Lift me up and among the teeth and gums cause me to do error. The blood of the tooth
I will suck and of the gum I will gnaw its root."
He packs medicine into his tooth and intones: "Because thou has said this, oh tooth worm,
Let the God of the Void smite you with his mighty fist."
Thus did dentistry begin. Not with drills and sterile offices, but with magic.
♪ Intro ♪
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Dentistry may actually be one of the oldest forms of medicine.
But it was also one of the last ones to professionalize.
In fact, dentistry spent several millennia mired in magic and superstition. With chance,
Amulets and folk beliefs working in conjunction with brutal treatments like hand extraction.
That's of course where a practitioner would take a tooth between their fingers rock it back and forth and wait, wait, wait, wait wait
Please don't click away. Don't worry. We know a lot of people have phobias about dental surgery to be honest
I have a few myself
So Rob and I have had a talk about not getting too specific about the painful stuff in this episode
Haven't we Rob Yeah, right. We're not going to have another flu pandemic series on our hands
Are we Rob? Good
Because we all realize now that not everyone spends their days doing research in museums full of human bodies
Some people might get grossed out Rob
I think we came to an understanding and Rob has assured me that this first part about
Neanderthal dentistry is as bad as this episode gets so let's push on through
Though the ritual that opened this episode comes from ancient Mesopotamia. We've actually discovered evidence of dental treatments in even Neolithic times
13,000 years ago
Neanderthals were using basic tools for tooth extraction placing sticks against an infected tooth and hitting it with a rock and
Other early teeth show signs of having their infected bits scraped out with flint tools
But neolithic healers only had to deal with wear and tear teeth that cracked or ground down from overuse
It wasn't until the advent of Agriculture that dental caries better known as tooth decay
Became a problem because farming meant sugars from bread beer wine and honey and as civilization rose
oral hygiene fell
particularly among the upper-class
But the kicker was people didn't know that their diet was eroding their teeth
To ancient folks the parties responsible were either demons imbalanced fluids known as humors or the pernicious
But imaginary tooth worm that burrowed holes in teeth and gums
Some treatments included smoking out the worm packing a tooth with gums and wax to smother it or wearing magical amulets to ward it away
Mesopotamian texts recommend elaborate rituals and spells some of which involve venerating and kissing a human skull
Tooth extraction was also a common punishment referred to twice in Hammurabi's code
Because in the ancient world an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth
Was not just a catchy saying but a system for meeting out justice, but other societies like Egypt considered dentistry
The tomb of court physician Hesse Rey dated 26 60. BCE is decorated with hieroglyphics
Proclaiming him as the greatest of those who deal with teeth and in addition to looking after the Pharaohs teeth
He was also given offices like keeper of the royal records and guard of the Pharaohs diadem
It appears that high office regularly accompanied those who looked after the royal teeth
Another Egyptian palace dentist cooee was rewarded with grand offices that spoke to his skill treating the Pharaohs digestive system
Including the prodigious title guardian of the anus but grand titles aside
Egyptian dentists were also well known for their pain relief drugs most made from opium or literal poisons
They also used mouthwashes burn substances to fumigate the mouth with smoke and did tooth extractions by hand
Further east things were not quite so dire
The most advanced dentistry of the ancient world happened in India where Vedic texts mixed religion with sound oral advice
They urged daily teeth cleanings with paste in a soft piece of shrub
also mentioning doctors who can scrape away plaque and
Jewelers who wire loose teeth to stronger ones with gold thread in fact some surviving dental tools
Look a lot like the ones we still use today
Things were also advancing in the West in Greece the medical scholar Hippocrates and the philosopher Aristotle both wrote about dental practice
Throwing aside the superstition that surrounded toothaches and instead
studying the eruption patterns and blood supply of teeth and like in India the Greeks also wired loose teeth and
Practiced extractions with a pair of forceps barring the nightmarish name of the Oh Dante Cogan yet
even these philosophers fell victim to mixing in belief on
Critically repeating an old superstition that men have more teeth than women. It wasn't until Rome
however
That ancient dentistry came into its own though dental bridges
Replacement teeth put into a plate and anchored to remaining teeth did predate Roman dentistry the dentists of the Eternal City
invented gold crowns and made dental prosthetics out of materials like ivory bone and hard wood and Rome marked the first time that
Dentistry began to be seen as a separate and to a certain extent less prestigious form of the wider medical profession yet
there were also people who pushed back on that the Roman medical writer Celsus for example began arguing that oral health was actually a
reflection of the overall state of the body but regardless of its practitioners status
Roman dentists began to make advances
one Syrian surgeon living in Rome was the first to use drills and circular saws to open infected teeth exposed the Pope beneath and
Okay, Rob, that's too much detail. We talked about this wait way too much. I'm just gonna skip ahead if that's okay
Another suggested curing gum obsesses by taking a red-hot poker and are you kidding me?
We talked about this man people don't want to see that David doesn't want to draw that
You know what? I'm just gonna keep turning pages until I find something that isn't excruciating. Okay. Oh,
That's a big nope. Oh
That's a mouthwash. Really. Oh, okay
Here we go in the Middle Ages
Dentists and those suffering from tooth maladies could call on Saint Apollonia who was martyred when a mob yanked out all of her
Rob seriously who hurt you, you know, what word is gonna jump into early modern times
Despite the intervening centuries by the 17th century
Dental techniques hadn't really advanced much since the Roman era in Europe
The profession was split between two types of practitioners
The first tooth pullers would travel the country as part of carnival shows and variety acts
extracting teeth on a stage in a weird marriage of medicine and
Entertainment most were untrained charlatans who dressed in bizarre costumes and sold quack medicine trained in sleight of hand much like magicians
Their assistants would mingle with the crowd and pretend to have teeth pulled early in the show
Proving the process was quick and painless
They left a trail of broken jaws shattered and fatal infections in their wake but in their own way
they were extending the long tradition of paring magic with dentistry using the power of belief to con audiences into buying miracle tonics and
lecturing on the conquest of the mythical tooth worm
the relief they offered was little different from
Mesopotamian priests doctors and Neolithic shamans the second type of dental practitioner was the barber surgeon
Which is exactly what it sounds like a barber who also does surgery see back in the 12th century
The Vatican had sent out an edict
Attempting to professionalize the medical field in particular the dangerous but increasingly common practice of surgery
major surgical operations were restricted to physicians
whereas the more minor services such as bleeding lancing boils and
Dentistry were left to the barber surgeons many countries and cities followed the Pope's lead and enacted the split
So if you ever wondered what that red and white striped pole outside your barbershop represents
The white is for bandages and the red is for blood in fact a spa day in the 17th century
might involve getting a shave some light leach work having a bath getting the corns cut off your feet having your wig brushed out and
Getting a tooth capped with gold now that sounds relaxing
The barber surgeons weren't saved in the superstition of the traveling shows
But they also weren't scientific and the pairing of Dentistry to cosmetic services
Revealed that the people of the time considered oral health to be an aesthetic concern which couldn't be further from the truth
in fact
The Roman writer Celsus was right an increasing amount of modern evidence links oral health with overall health for instance
Did you know that people with poor oral health are at even greater risk for heart attacks?
But luckily medical dentistry was about to get its first champion in
1723 the French dentist Pierre for Shard published his book the surgeon dentist a treatise on teeth and
It's hard to even emphasize how revolutionary it was
First of all for sure described in detail the methods of installing tooth fillings and dental prosthetics like bridges
Creating a set of best practices of operations for people who had mostly learned through apprenticeships of varying quality
but this book went far beyond serving as a how-to guide for restorative dentistry bushard also in a study of oral anatomy and
descriptions of how the mouth teeth and gums functioned
critically
he identified for the first time that sugar was in fact the elusive substance that caused tooth decay after more than
10,000 years for shard had banished the evil spirits and tooth worms from dental practice
oral health would now be the realm of science not demons and dentistry would be its own profession, but
Science can often be just as wild as superstition
So join us next time as we enter the era of forensic dentistry ether rags and the pedal driven drill
It won't hurt a bit
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