It’s almost Turkey Day! Fun with family, (or
arguments) and all that food...stuck in your teeth. In England, where they didn’t
celebrate Thanksgiving, they still needed to clean up those pearly whites, and
the eighteenth century had a unique manner of dental hygiene.
Up through
the seventeenth century, dental care was erratic. Tooth extraction was usually
performed by barber-surgeons and had a horrific and painful connotation. That
pain and irregularity continued into the eighteenth century. 
To advertise their services as “tooth-pullers,” these barber-surgeons hung rows of rotten teeth outside their shops. That must have been gruesome.
Thankfully the dental field did evolve in this
century. Frenchman Pierre Fauchard
(1678 –1761) is considered the father of modern dentistry. A highly skilled
surgeon, he made remarkable improvements in dental instruments, often adapting
tools from watch makers, jewelers and even barbers. He introduced dental
fillings as treatment for dental cavities. He insisted that sugar derivate
acids like tartaric acid were responsible for dental decay—a man ahead of his
time.
In Britain “Operators for the teeth” developed into
“dentists.” Samuel Darkin, who practiced in Whitechapel in the 1760’s,
advertised himself as “Surgeon-dentist to his Majesty; Families attended by the
year.”
Several women combined dentistry with other skills, such
as the enterprising Madame Silvie who made and fitted artificial teeth. “Those
who don’t chuse to make their grievances known by asking for the Artificial
Teeth-maker may ask for the Gold Snuff-box and Tweezer-case Maker.”British surgeon John Hunter penned two important books in this time period, Natural History of Human Teeth (1771 ) and Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Teeth (1778). In 1763 he entered into a period of collaboration with the London-based dentist James Spence. Hunter theorized the possibility of tooth transplants from one person to another.
The fear of
tooth-pulling remained widespread (and without modern pain-killers it was
understandable). After her niece’s excruciating experience, Jane
Austen declared she would not let Mr. Spence “look at my teeth for a shilling a
tooth and double it!”
Basic dental hygiene was little more than a
toothpick and wiping down your gums with a cloth. Women suffered tooth loss
worse than men due to vitamin loss during pregnancy. The poor also struggled
with dental care.
They were more concerned with buying food for their family
than paying for tooth powders and the newly invented mass-produced toothbrush.
 |
| Horse hair toothbrush |
But dental
procedures and care gained respect in the later eighteenth century. To
avoid the pain of tooth extraction, or the expense of dentures, the art of
teeth cleaning advanced.
England’s William
Addis (a rag trader) is believed to have invented the first mass-produced
toothbrush in 1780. In 1770, jailed for causing a riot, he found the prison
method to clean teeth—rubbing a rag with soot and salt over your teeth—ineffective.
From one of his meals, he saved a small
animal bone, drilled it with holes, and obtained bristles from a guard. He tied
the bristles into tufts in the holes and sealed them with glue.
After his
release, he started a business that would manufacture his toothbrushes, and he
became very rich.
With the desire for better hygiene came the marketing of Toothpaste and powders. These were hyped as not only keeping teeth clean but in a time of rampant Pyorrhoea and scurvy, useful for fastening in those pesky loose teeth. Toothpowder came in a ceramic pot and was available either as a powder or paste. The ingredients could include crushed bones, oyster shells and pumice. The rich applied it with brushes and the poor with their fingers.
1 1/2 oz. cinnamon; and 1 oz. burnt alum.
Beat the above ingredients together and use every second day.
Sources: Dr. Johnson’s London by Liza Picard, and Wikipedia.
http://bookswelove.net/lewis.php
With the desire for better hygiene came the marketing of Toothpaste and powders. These were hyped as not only keeping teeth clean but in a time of rampant Pyorrhoea and scurvy, useful for fastening in those pesky loose teeth. Toothpowder came in a ceramic pot and was available either as a powder or paste. The ingredients could include crushed bones, oyster shells and pumice. The rich applied it with brushes and the poor with their fingers.
A 1780 receipt for tooth powder:
1 1/2 oz. dragons blood (not easy to find I imagine)1 1/2 oz. cinnamon; and 1 oz. burnt alum.
Beat the above ingredients together and use every second day.
Horace
Walpole put his faith in alum. He’d occasionally dissolve a lump in his mouth
to keep his teeth strong. It must have tasted terrible.
Fauchard
recommended using your own urine to clean your teeth—something that was always
handy. Another method was bashing the end of a wooden skewer, to render it
brush-like: “You must clean your teeth with this brush alone...once a
fortnight, not oftener, dip your skewer brush into a few grains of
gunpowder...”
Not surprisingly, most
of these concoctions and methods did more harm than good by destroying tooth
enamel.
Lord Chesterfield
warned against the use of these sticks or any hard surface, as they “destroy
the varnish of the teeth.” Smart man.
Delicate
gold-handled toothbrushes, sometimes with replaceable heads, were included in
the cases of toilet instruments for the rich. Toothpicks made of quills were
the eighteenth-century dental floss and were kept in pretty jeweled boxes.
Sounds more for show than practical use.
Fortunately for us,
the knowledge and advantage of dental hygiene improved greatly in the years to
come. |
| Toothpick box |
Sources: Dr. Johnson’s London by Liza Picard, and Wikipedia.
My eighteenth-century
characters, strong-willed women, had healthy teeth: check out my website to visit
the wilds of Cornwall:
http://www.dianescottlewis.orghttp://bookswelove.net/lewis.php
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