Chelsea Follett at Human Progress:
The writer P. J. O’Rourke famously quipped, “When you think of the good old days, think one word: dentistry.” So let us take his advice. James Wynbrandt’s The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces provides plenty to chew on. As the New York Times Book Review put it, “Wynbrandt has clearly done his homework.”
Our ancestors’ teeth were in an appalling state. As Wynbrandt points out while quoting the Old Testament, calling a woman’s teeth white as sheep and noting that none were missing once counted as high praise worthy of a love poem. After all, healthy teeth were far rarer in the past than today. The first mass-produced bristle toothbrush did not appear until around 1780 in England during that country’s industrialization. Our preindustrial forebears had only a primitive understanding of what was causing their teeth to rot, fall out, and constantly ache.
More here.
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