A GLANCE AT DENTAL HISTORY. 
ADDRESS 
DELIVERED BEFORE THH 
Massachusetts Dental Society,- 
i 
AT ITS 
TWELFTH ANNUAL MEETING, 
DECEMBER 14, 1876, 
BY 
R. R. ANDREWS, D. D. S., 
OF CAMBRIDGE. 
I 
I 
SALEM: I 
PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS. 
1877. PRINTED BY ORDER OP THE MASSACHUSETTS DENTAL SOCIETY. 
J. H. BATCHEEDER, CHAIRMAN, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. ADDRESS. 
Mr, President, and Gentlemen: 
You have assigned me both an honorable and a 
difficult task on this occasion of our annual gather- 
ing. Permit me to thank you at the outset, for the 
honor you have thought fit to extend to me, while, 
at the same time, I shall accept the difficulty of the 
task with every limitation of circumstance which I 
may deem to be favorable to myself. 
There are themes without number which we might 
discuss, both profitable and interesting at such a time 
as this, and before this Brotherhood of Dentists; for, 
in the realm of scientific research, new phases of de- 
velopment are constantly adding treasures to dental 
knowledge, which it would be interesting to criticize 
in their freshness and originality; but this is too 
wide a range, and far too speculative in character, 
for either our purpose or my inclination. Theories 
are unsafe until they have crystallized into facts,— 
then they become practical. 
It is my intention, in my address, to present to you 
what has grown into—what has become woven into 
the very texture of the history of Dentistry. His- 
tory is a growth: the things that enter into it must 
have had their times of being, or else they could not have been recorded; and growth indicates age. A 
day’s experience may indeed be history, but until it 
has grown into a long series of like experiences it 
will not be regarded as history in the truest sense. 
An experiment may indeed be a matter of history, 
but until the experiment grows into something more 
tangible than itself, it does not pass into history. 
Dentistry has a history,— has had one for centu- 
ries,— has been groping through all the ages, by 
steps, from darkness to the light. As a specialty of 
the surgeon’s art, it has developed with surgery. It 
has had its epoch of growth; its honorable mention 
in the writings of the sacred past; its champions, 
who speak from behind the shadowy hills of distant 
ages gone; handed down from sire to son until it 
comes to us, who must improve the trust and hand it 
down to other generations, an enlarged power. In 
their relation to human beauty the teeth have figured 
in poetry and prose from the earliest times. It was 
Ovid who wrote the significant lines,— 
“Let not the nymph with laughter much abound, 
Whose teeth are black, unsightly, or unsound.” 
"While Laurence Sterne, of more modern fame, speaks 
of " a pearly set of teeth so beautiful that Royalty 
would have pawned her choicest jewels for them.” 
The teeth demand a peculiar treatment, a separate 
professional skill, which, in its kind, is unlike that of 
any other. This is why we limit the name of our 
profession, and call it Dentistry,— a special practice 5 
which involves truly the science of the teeth. Ont 
from among the dim ages of past wisdom,— away 
back amid the shadows of perished times,—we have 
preserved for ns the record of the first effects of den- 
tal skill. Five centuries before the time of Christ, 
we find it mentioned in Herodotus, that in Egypt 
there were physicians for the sole care of the teeth, 
the dentists of twenty-three hundred years ago. 
Cicero has left the mention of the name of JEscula- 
pius in his writings, whom he says was the first to 
extract teeth; and also mentions that the leaden in- 
strument, called odontagogon, used by him, was hung 
in his temple by the ancients. 
Pursuing further this first epoch of dental history, 
there is scarcely room for doubt that the teeth were 
objects of special care, inasmuch as gold was found 
about the teeth of the dead; for one of the laws of 
Pome, formed by the Decemveri, was that gold found 
about the teeth of the dead should be burned with 
the corpse. I find it stated by one writer that it was 
HDsculapins, the third, who first extracted teeth, and 
that Hippocrates, his successor, was the first to leave 
any writings in regard to their maladies. In these 
writings, he notices that dentition is easiest with child- 
ren in winter, and that when the bowels are in a 
relaxed state there is less danger of convulsions. 
Very cold drinks, he says, hurt the teeth; diseased 
teeth he finds to be the cause of many disorders, and 
in this case he counsels extraction. When a firm 
tooth ached he used the cautery. Pough edges of 6 
decayed teeth, he states, cause ulcers on the tongue, 
and swellings of the gums he attributed to caries. 
Loose and painful teeth he extracted; such as were 
merely loose he tied to adjoining teeth with threads 
of gold and with silk. He lived four hundred and 
fifty years before the time of Christ. 
Three hundred years later we find that Celsus, a 
celebrated surgeon of his time, wrote much about the 
teeth. He left many recipes for the cure of aching 
teeth, which he regarded as one of the greatest of 
human afflictions. One treatment was to restrict his 
patient to a low diet, and he employed emollient ap- 
plications, in the form of vapor, to the teeth and 
gums, wrapping up the head and using blisters on 
the breast or shoulders. He was averse to extrac- 
tion. He treated the gums about loosened teeth with 
the cautery, afterwards anointing with honey. When 
a tooth was decayed and rough he filed it ” with an 
iron file.” 
Thus we observe more light is gradually thrown 
on the treatment of the teeth. In the middle of the 
first Christian century we find it written that one Ar- 
chigenes, a Homan surgeon, invented an instrument 
for boring a small hole in the teeth, in cases where 
medical applications failed to give relief. Is not this 
the operation we call rizodontrophy? About this 
time Scribonius makes the first mention of the tooth- 
pick, a little instrument to be made of mastic wood 
or of quills. 
Later, in the early part of the second century, we 7 
find a bit of literature on the care of the teeth, which 
is most opportune to our present purpose, and al- 
though not written by a surgical writer, is sufficiently 
interesting and pertinent to be given entire. It is a 
chapter which I find in a discourse on magic, written 
by one Apuleius,— seventeen hundred years ago, 
and it is so terse on the subject of the teeth, that it 
gives us a good commentary on ancient ideas of their 
care. It seems Apuleius had been sharply criticized 
for writing certain lines, which he sent to one Cal- 
purnianus, with a dentifrice, and in the chapter re- 
ferred to says:— 
" I will now take up the argument in reference to 
the lines,— compositions of mine: 
“In hurried verse, I bid Calpernian hail I 
I’ve sent, as you requested, the dentifrice,— 
Arabian produce,—brightener of the mouth; 
A fine, choice powder,— a rare whitener,— 
A soother of the swollen, tender gums,— 
A cleaner out of scraps of yesterday, 
That no unsightly blemish may be seen 
If you should chance, with open lips, to laugh! 
”And now, pray, what do these lines contain, in 
meaning or in language, that I should be ashamed 
of ? What is there that a philosopher should be at 
all unwilling to acknowledge as his own composition? 
Unless, perchance, I was deserving of reprehension 
for sending to Calpurnianus a powder made of Ara- 
bian drugs, seeing that he was a person who might 8 
have, with much more propriety, after the filthy man- 
ner of the Iberians,— 
“ ‘With his own water, wash his teeth and rusty gums, 
"As Catullus says. 
" I perceived just now some who could hardly con- 
trol their laughter, when the orator inveighed with 
such asperity against cleaning of the teeth, and pro- 
nounced the word dentifrice with more indignation 
than anyone else would speak of poison. And why 
should he not? No doubt it is a crime to be over- 
looked in a philosopher if he is particular in his pre- 
caution against dirt; if he allows no part of his body 
that is exposed to view to be unclean and filthy,— 
the mouth especially, which man makes frequent use 
of, openly and conspicuously, whether he kisses an- 
other, or discourses on any subject, or lectures before 
an audience, or repeats his prayers in a temple • for 
so it is that words precede every act of mankind,— 
words which, as the first of poets says, issue forth 
from the hedge of the teeth. If you could, at the 
present day, produce anyone gifted with powers of 
utterance as grand as those with which he was en- 
dowed, he would declare in his usual manner, that 
from him, above all men, who has any care for the 
art of speaking, the mouth requires more sedulous 
attention than all the rest of the body, seeing that it 
is the vestibule of the mind, the gateway of speech, 
and the outer court of the thoughts. At all events, 
according to my way of thinking, I should say that 9 
nothing so ill becomes a man who is of free birth and 
of liberal education as inattention to the appearance 
of the mouth. Yon look upon no feature before this 
in a man while he is silent; no one more frequently 
while he is in the act of speaking. 
" I only wish now that my censor, JEmilianns, 
would answer me this question,—whether he is ever 
in the habit of washing his feet, or whether, if he 
does not deny this fact, he would contend that greater 
care ought to be bestowed upon the cleanliness of the 
feet than upon the teeth? If, indeed, a person like 
yourself, JEmilianus, will hardly ever open his mouth 
except to utter calumnies or revilings, I am clearly 
of the opinion that he ought to bestow no attention 
whatever on his mouth, nor to clean his teeth with 
powder brought from abroad, when he might much 
more appropriately rub them with charcoal snatched 
from the funeral pile; and that he ought not so much 
as to rinse them with common water. On the con- 
trary, let his malignant tongue, the caterer of false- 
hoods and of bitter abuse, forever lie amid the stench 
and foulness which so well become it; for how in the 
name of misfortune is it consistent with reason that 
one should have a clean and purified tongue, and at 
the same time a loathsome and offensive voice? That 
he should, like the viper, instil black venom from 
teeth white as snow? On the other hand, in the case 
of him who knows he is going to utter language that 
is neither inappropriate nor unpleasing, it is with 
good reason that his mouth is washed beforehand, 10 
just like a cup when it is prepared for containing- a 
pleasant draught. 
" But why enlarge further upon this topic with re- 
gard to mankind? That huge beast, the crocodile, 
which is produced in the Nile,— even it, as lam 
informed, opens wide its jaws, and without inflicting 
injury, allows its teeth to be cleansed; for it has an 
immense mouth and no tongue, and generally lies con- 
cealed beneath the water; numbers of leeches fasten 
about its teeth,—wherefor it repairs to the banks of 
the river and opens its mouth, and one of the river- 
birds, a friend to it, thrusts in her beak and picks its 
teeth without incurring any risk. No more of this.” 
And so ends, probably, the first chapter ever writ- 
ten on the care of the teeth. Marked by a vigorous 
originality, this discourse is one of peculiar force and 
should live in the annals of dentistry as an appeal 
from the dead past to the living present. 
Later we find Galen, a celebrated physician of his 
time, writing much in regard to the teeth. He finds 
a difference in odontalgia, the pain sometimes being 
in the tooth, sometimes in the gum. He writes that 
a dentist once tried to extract a tooth for him, but 
only succeeded in lifting it a little from the socket; 
but this caused all pain to cease, and the tooth was 
retained for use a number of years. Masticating the 
root of purslane, or a decoction of it used as a lotion, 
was his cure for an aching tooth. He speaks of using 
applications to make faulty teeth fall out; these, it 
would seem, were secrets with him. 11 
In the year six hundred and thirty-six,— the last 
well defined period of dental history until after the 
excitements and disturbances of the decline of Ro- 
man power and the superstitions of the Dark Ages, 
—we find Panins, of AEgina, writing much that is 
interesting to ns. He says, that to save the teeth 
one must avoid indigestion and obstipation. He rec- 
ommends cleansing the month after every meal, to 
avoid eating sweets, or anything very cold, or biting 
very hard substances, as this, he notices, injures the 
enamel. 
"About this time,” in the words of an old writer, 
" the barbarous nations began to overrun the whole 
earth, and surgery was so far from increasing that it 
received the same fate with all other parts of knowl- 
edge, and suffered under the common calamity.” 
Sometime between this and the tenth century, Mo- 
hammed Arrasi, an Arabian dentist, is mentioned as 
having filled the hollow of carious teeth with a com- 
position of mastic and alum, afterwards rubbing the 
teeth and gums with pepper and powdered gall-nuts; 
he used astringent applications when the teeth were 
loose. For odontalgia he recommended oil of roses, 
pellitory root, opium, scarification, and leeches to the 
gum; if these failed, he touched the roots of the 
tooth with cautery, and then endeavored to eradicate 
it by means of certain specifics. Albacasis, an Ara- 
bian physician, sometime in the twelfth century, is 
said to have given certain rules for replacing lost 
teeth by artificial ones made of animal bone or ivory. 12 
The method used by the Arabians at this time to de- 
stroy the pulp, was to push on it a red-hot needle 
through a metallic tube. 
To Avicenna belongs the honor of publishing the 
first work giving the anatomy and physiology of the 
teeth. He believed worms to be the cause of the 
tooth-ache, and gives many hints in regard to tooth 
powders and narcotics as odontalgic remedies. He 
recommends boring carious teeth to let out any ac- 
cumulation of humors, as well as to apply eradicating 
specifics with greater ease. To eradicate a tooth, the 
gum was first scarified, and the specific applied cau- 
tiously to the tooth; to keep them from injury, the 
neighboring teeth were covered up until the tooth 
operated upon became completely loosened. Michael 
Sarvonarola, who died in 1162, in his " Practical Com- 
pendium,” says that after the great pestilence of 1318 
the number of teeth found in the human jaws were 
only twenty-two,—sometimes twenty-four,—and that 
before this pestilence there had always been thirty- 
two. 
"When we consider that at this period the whole 
earth was overrun with barbaric tribes of men, whose 
instincts were savage, and whose customs were rude 
and untempered, we may not wonder that dental sur- 
gery, in common with almost every other branch of 
knowledge and industry, became largely contami- 
nated with absurd systems, and partook of the super- 
stitious veneration for charms and nostrums which 
characterized the history of the Middle Ages. It 13 
may not be uninteresting at this juncture, to cite some 
instances of the crude manner in which, at this time, 
fact was adulterated with superstitious fancy; they 
may serve to show one of the stages of development 
through which dentistry has passed. 
Thus Gaddesden, court physician to Edward 11., 
speaks of using the grease of a green frog to cure 
an aching tooth, and says that if the gums are rubbed 
with this remedy the offending tooth will soon fall out. 
In cases of retarded and difficult dentition, the grease 
of animals was used,— sometimes the brain of a hare, 
or what was considered better, the milk of a slut,— to 
be rubbed over the gums of the little sufferer until the 
teeth were cut. And John Arculanus, whom I find 
to be the first writer to speak of filling carious teeth 
with leaves of gold (about 1430), makes this curious 
and unintelligible statement: "In performing this 
operation, regard must be had to the complexion of 
the patient, warm ingredients being employed for 
those of a cold constitution, and vice-versa.” 
Lawrence Phries, in his "Mirror of Medicine” 
(1529), says that pain in the teeth is caused by an 
effusion from the brain into the tooth; if this effusion 
was hot, the pain was sticking and sharp; but if the 
effusion was cold, there was no sharp pain, but the 
gums and face were swollen. Bad vapors from the 
stomach also caused pain, and this could be known 
by the pain becoming less either before or after 
meals: the treatment for this form was a system of 
diet. He says that if pain in the teeth is not cured 14 
by the simplest drugs, recourse may be had to the 
narcotics* if then the pain could not be stilled, and 
it was certainly located in the tooth, and not in the 
nerve, the tooth must be broken out. Phries gives a 
long prescription, the principal ingredient of which 
was arsenic, to eradicate a tooth; he also invented 
numerous tooth powders. 
Thus, until about the sixteenth century, the dark- 
ness of ignorance and blind fanaticism prevailed, and 
then the dawn of a brighter period began. Early in 
this century the effect of mercury on the teeth and 
gums was noticed. 
Yersalius, a noted surgeon of his time, whose la- 
borious investigations are said to have given birth to 
anatomy, found that in cases of difficult dentition 
nature might be much assisted by making incisions 
in the gums, cutting quite down to the crown of the 
tooth. He also recommended turpentine to facilitate 
the protrusion of the teeth, in place of the disgusting 
remedies before in use. Ambrose Pare, whose great 
reputation saved his life at the massacre of the Hu- 
guenots (he being a Protestant), wrote much in re- 
gard to the teeth. He relates to us the case of a lady 
who, having had a tooth extracted, had it replaced by 
one taken fresh from the mouth of her serving wo- 
man. The origin of this operation has been, by some, 
ascribed to John Hunter; but this is a mistake. "We 
have the record of it here two centuries before Hun- 
ter’s time. Many of the dental instruments invented 
by Pare resemble those in present use. About this 15 
time it was recommended to stop up a defective pal- 
ate, when the bone was eaten through by caries, with 
a piece of sponge or with a silver plate. 
Dupont (A. D. 1633) was of opinion that the best 
way to cure an aching tooth was to extract it, and 
then to immediately replace it. He makes the state- 
ment that a tooth so treated will never afterwards be 
painful. 
About the middle of the seventeeth century, ISTa- 
thaniel Highmore discovered the cavity in the centre 
of each maxillary bone, extending from the orbit of 
the eye to the roof of the mouth, called in honor of 
his name Antrum Highmori. This was a highly im- 
portant discovery, giving a clew as it did to many 
affections apparently of the teeth, which had hitherto 
baffled the skill of all operators. I find it mentioned 
that it was the practice at this time to kill the nerve 
(pulp) of an aching tooth with aquafortis, oil of vit- 
riol, and the cautery. In the year 1678, Leeuwen- 
hoeck discovered, with his simple microscope, the 
microscopical anatomy of the teeth; but his discov- 
eries were so much ahead of his time that they had 
to wait generations to find themselves confirmed. 
Peter Diones, a French surgeon, published a work in 
1696, which evinces that the practitioners of that pe- 
riod began to take a lively interest in dental surgery. 
His observations on operations which now belong 
exclusively to the dentist, are exceedingly pertinent 
and valuable. He censures the practice, too common 
at the present day, of running to the dentist on every 16 
occasion of the slightest pain, to have the tooth ex- 
tracted. He enumerates every legitimate cause for 
extracting, and gives a description of the various 
instruments used for dental operations in his time. 
Thus I have tried to convey a tolerably accurate 
idea of the history of dental surgery from the earliest 
times to the commencement of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. As we now approach a period better known, 
and in which the dental art has made such vast 
strides, it is neither practical nor essential to notice 
all the writings of the last century; indeed, my time 
would not allow. I shall therefore content myself 
with a cursory glance at a few. 
We find in 1728 the dental art in France in the 
hands of some very skilful dental operators. Perri 
Fauchard, the most celebrated, wrote a work entitled 
" The Surgeon Dentist.” He was the first to use a 
special chair for dental operations, instead of having 
the patient sit on the floor, or lie on a couch, as was 
the custom. He treated many cases of caries by re- 
placing the teeth after extraction, tying them with 
wire to those adjoining, filling them as soon as they 
became fixed and painless. He used fine pewter for 
filling, preferring it to either gold or lead. He regu- 
lated misplaced front teeth with an instrument called 
a pellican, retaining them in place with wire; he 
speaks of performing this operation frequently and 
successfully. 
Bunon described an affection of the teeth which he 
claims the merit of having discovered, and which he 17 
calls erosion. About this time Heister, a surgeon 
practising in London, writes: "If a tooth aches, cau- 
terize it by inserting a red-hot instrument into its 
cavity, by which practice you will free the patient 
instantly of pain, provided you do not burn the adja- 
cent parts of the mouth.” To extract a tooth he 
says,—” If it be a lower one, place your patient on a 
low seat; if an upper one, he must be seated on a 
high stool; then take the instrument best adapted to 
the case, and thereby draw out the tooth, as though 
you were extracting a nail out of a piece of board” 
Philip Pfaff, a German writer of 1786, informs us 
that artificial teeth were first formed of silver, and 
of mother-of-pearl, subsequently of ivory and neat’s 
horn, but in more recent times, of copper, covered 
with a delicate enamel. The eighteenth century was 
not without its charms and nostrums, any more than 
those periods of acknowledged ignorance and super- 
stition, before alluded to. So late as 1794 we find it 
written that one Reneiri Gerbi cured six hundred and 
nine cases of severe odontalgia by using the larva, 
curculio anti-odontalgicus, which is found in the blos- 
soms of the cardnus spinosissimus. Fourteen or fif- 
teen of the larva were crushed between the forefinger 
and thumb; the tooth was then touched with these, 
and the pain entirely removed in a moment. The 
finger and thumb so charged, he says, retain their 
healing power for a year. In 1797 we find Dubois 
de Chemant, a Frenchman, announcing the invention 
of a paste for making mineral teeth. The merit of 18 
this invention was, however, claimed by Dnchatean, 
a French apothecary. The writings of Fox and 
Hunter are too well known to need any mention 
here. 
Thus have I described, so far as I have been able 
to learn, the steps of growth which have marked the 
progress of onr profession up to the commencement 
of the nineteenth century. Gleaning from rare har- 
vests of treasured thought, from books that have 
lived on for centuries after their authors have moul- 
dered into dust, it has been my endeavor to present 
in these brief outlines, what the past has done for 
dentistry. The men of the past who have become 
prominent in giving our profession the high rank it 
takes to-day, have been the men who, with unceasing 
toil, not content with what they had already acquired, 
sought to learn more. Shall we be behind them, with 
all the advantages to be derived from this age of in- 
tellectual power, and amid the vast multitude of 
modern appliances? Upon our answer depends the 
future of dentistry. 
Our work is to preserve what God has made and 
what man has corrupted. The human teeth are tjie 
creation of a divine hand, and if we would but real- 
ize our mission in its highest significance, we should 
know that we are ministers to heal in Heaven’s name. 
Let this be our inspiration:—To act nobly and well, 
that in the mouths of many witnesses our judgment 
may be just.