The history of dentistry Pt. II- We did not learn dentistry from the Greeks

Toothaches are one of those things that we can be sure even our forefathers dealt with. We shudder when we hear how some people solve their toothaches with a monkey wrench. Our elders also had some pretty good solutions as well. In these articles, you can see the evolution of dentistry into its present form.

900 BC the Greeks started a big thing - they started to set down the basics of the discipline of dentistry by not following religious doctrine but instead relyíing on empirical claims. They no longer believed that tiny maggots are responsible for toothaches. They discovered that food together with saliva could rot your teeth.   

Decayed teeth were burnt out, extractions were relatively rare, only teeth that were already moving got pulled, and usually fingers were enough, vice like instruments were relatively rare. There is an ancient leaden vice in the house of Delphi dating from 500, which has the inscription on it that teeth that cannot be removed with this implement should stay in. Prostheses did not exist to the Greeks.

A good moral of this story is that like tooth decay, old myths die hard as well; Europeans believed that tooth worms were the cause of tooth decay and toothaches until well into the nineteenth century.

The reason for this belief may have been that seeds were used as dental fillings, and were placed into the hole using mastic, the ancestor of chewing gum. So if a seed sprouted, you had something that looks a lot like your worm....  

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