From Mesopotamian mouth worms to hippo ivory dentures, the history of tooth care is long, winding and absolutely gruesome
Dentistry is as ancient as teeth, because teeth are terrible, just an atrocious invention. A 14,000-year-old infected tooth found in Italy showed signs of being “worked on” with a flint tool – grim – which tells you everything you need to about their fundamental uselessness.
Every civilisation since has tried to do something about our terrible mouth bones. People always say “ooh teeth were fine until we started eating refined sugar”, which may be partially true, but ancient Mesopotamian tablets were already talking about a cosmic “tooth worm” – tûltu – that the gods sent to live in your mouth and that caused decay. Pleasingly, you can even listen to a tooth worm incantation from a Mesopotamian tablet: “Place me and let me dwell between tooth and gum,” it goes. “So I can suck the tooth’s blood and mince up the gum!” It sounds perfectly plausible to me (and the theory persisted, patchily, until the 17th century).
