History of dental treatments
[3] The earliest known use of a filling after removal of decayed or infected pulp is found in a Paleolithic who lived near modern-day Tuscany, Italy, from 13,000 to 12,740 BP.
[4] Although inconclusive, researchers have suggested that rudimentary dental procedures have been performed as far back as 130,000 years ago by Neanderthals.
He is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology and a pioneer in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially in the treatment of wounds.
[8] There is archeological evidence that humans have attempted to replace missing teeth with root form implants for thousands of years.
[10][11] Wilson Popenoe and his wife in 1931, at a site in Honduras dating back to 600 AD, found the lower mandible of a young Mayan woman, with three missing incisors replaced by pieces of sea shells, shaped to resemble teeth.
These workers devised a method of constructing a chamber of titanium which was then embedded into the soft tissue of the ears of rabbits.
Brånemark carried out further studies into this phenomenon, using both animal and human subjects, which all confirmed this unique property of titanium.
He began working in the mouth as it was more accessible for continued observations and there was a high rate of missing teeth in the general population offered more subjects for widespread study.
[24] As early as the 7th century BC, Etruscans in northern Italy made partial dentures out of human or other animal teeth fastened together with gold bands.
[25] In 1579 gold and silver dentures were created by the barber-dentist Ambroise Paré for the French King Charles IX.
Ambroise Paré is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology and a pioneer in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially in the treatment of wounds.
[28] In 1728, Pierre Fauchard described the construction of dentures using a metal frame and teeth sculpted from animal bone.
[30][31] 17th century London's Peter de la Roche is believed to be one of the first 'operators for the teeth', men who advertised themselves as specialists in dental work.
[32] In 1820, Samuel Stockton, a goldsmith by trade, began manufacturing high-quality porcelain dentures mounted on 18-carat gold plates.
[33] In Britain, sequential Adult Dental Health Surveys revealed that in 1968 79% of those aged 65–74 had no natural teeth; by 1998, this proportion had fallen to 36%.
[36] John Adams says he lost them because he used them to crack Brazil nuts but modern historians suggest mercury oxide, which he was given to treat illnesses such as smallpox and malaria, probably contributed to the loss.
[38] Prior to these, he had a set made with real human teeth,[39] likely ones he purchased from "several unnamed Negroes, presumably Mount Vernon slaves" in 1784.
[42][a] Charles Darwin (1809–1882) had dental problems from an early age, resulting from the repeated vomiting that was a feature of his life-long illness and the seasickness he suffered when aboard HMS Beagle.
When the Beagle was in Hobart (1836) he visited a local dental practitioner, Henry Jeanneret (1802–1886) and earlier in the voyage (1833) he recorded that he needed a denture to be repaired.
