Teeth
Very few people like going to the dentist, but imagine what dental treatment would have been like in the seventeenth century.
The first recorded dental treatments actually occured in ancient Egypt and China and by the seventeenth century, treatments included tinctures, styptics and extractions. In July 1678, Dr Holder suggests that toothache can be treated by putting oil of tobacco into the hollow of a rotten tooth, though Hooke remarks that such treatment sent a maid servant into convulsions and led to her death, so it might not be a good method after all.
A few months later in January 1679, they continue their discussion of teeth, but here recount how teeth could be aritficially set in place of old ones. They find that if a new tooth was inserted as soon as the rotten one had been drawn out ‘the gums would coalesce and inclose the teeth as firmly almost, as if they were natural.’ This treatment was carried out on a young lady whose teeth were ‘much rotted by eating sweet meats’ by extracting the bad teeth and replacing them with those of a young boy. The treatment, for the young lady proved successful, though was perhaps not so good for the now toothless young boy.
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