SMILE!

A brief history of dental hygiene.

• As early as 3000 B.C., ancient Babylonians (in modern-day Iraq) recorded the use of “chew sticks”—twigs with frayed ends—to clean their teeth.

• Hieroglyphs reveal that in about 2000 B.C., the Egyptians were making a tooth powder consisting of crushed ashes, cattle hooves, myrrh, eggshells, and pumice (volcanic rock).

• By 1000 B.C., Persians were making toothpastes similar to the Egyptians’, but with burned and crushed snails and oysters added.

• Roman physician Scribonius Largus wrote in A.D. 47 that teeth should be scraped with a metal blade and the mouth rinsed with pure wine.

• Perhaps anecdotal, another story about ancient Roman dental care says that wealthy Romans bought other people’s urine to clean stains from their teeth. (The uric acid in urine actually makes this plausible.) According to some historians, the Romans considered urine from Portugal the best.

• In the seventh century, a quote attributed to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad says: “The siwak is an implement for the cleansing of teeth and a pleasure to God.” What’s a siwak? It’s a chew stick made from twigs of the Salvadora persica tree. Commonly called the “toothbrush tree,” it’s an evergreen shrub found in Africa and Asia. It is still used today, and contains natural compounds proven to prevent tooth decay.

• In the 19th century in Europe and America, tooth powders were the preferred teeth cleaner. People made them at home out of chalk, pulverized brick, salt, and even charcoal. The results were mixed.

• The first commercially available tubed toothpaste—invented in Connecticut in 1892— was called Dr. Sheffield’s Creme Dentifrice. (Sheffield got the idea after seeing French artists squeeze paint out of homemade tubes.) A few years later, in 1896, Colgate & Company released its first “Dental Cream.” This was also the time when fluoride was first added to toothpaste. But powder mixtures would remain the preferred teeth cleaners for most people until after World War I, when tubed toothpaste finally took hold.

In the 12th century, many Europeans believed that trees gave birth to birds.