EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE By David W. Brown
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want to take you back to the days before Crest and Colgate, when the rotting of teeth was just part of life. To a time when dentistry was done with hammers, and your breath was just your breath…and that was that. It wasn’t that long ago. When reading novels or histories, consider that if Scarlett O’Hara or Jane Eyre or Abraham Lincoln or William Shakespeare said hello to you, you’d immediately want to set yourself on fire. Woe to the time-traveling historians assigned to the 19th century or earlier! Your morning breath in 2021 was better than the absolute best day that Cleopatra ever knew. Helen of Troy’s face launched a thousand ships—but from a distance. From an olfactory standpoint, Marie Antoinette’s last day was the best of her life. Nary a pearly white in a single Founding Father’s head; it was sea to shining sea of hideous flaxen grins.
Here is a terrifying statistic. In 1900, only 7% of Americans brushed their teeth regularly. Today, according to Johnson & Johnson, 68% of Americans do. Just to be clear here: 32% of Americans today are not brushing their teeth regularly. That number is large enough that some of you are reading this very magazine, and I just have to know: WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING? I am growing weary of wearing my mask everywhere, but now I’m hoping we never stop. The reason so few people were brushing their teeth at the turn of the last century was the nature of toothpaste. It was gross: a jar of tooth powder shared by the family (or families), into which you plunged a damp toothbrush before sticking it in your own mouth. Everybody was double-dipping, and nobody was OK with it, and I’m with you there. Antibiotics hadn’t yet been invented, and who knows what was being passed around. Since then, scientists have delivered tubes of toothpaste unto the world like Moses presenting the 10 Commandments. There’s just no excuse for not using them.
At left, “The Tooth-Ache, or, Torment & Torture” was drawn and etched by by the British satirical artist Thomas Rowlandson in 1823; above, “Dr. E. L. Graves Unequaled Tooth Powder for Health and Beautiful Teeth” was produced and sold from 1906 to 1916.
Even in 1900, though, dental hygiene was not new. The rudimentary toothbrush is about 5,000 years old. Cultures and nations going back to ancient Egypt used twigs, generally, sharpened to get in between teeth. Tooth powder is even older than that: about 7,000 years old—a millennium more ancient than the pyramids. At the time, it was made from, among other things, ox hooves, burned eggshells and myrrh. (Perhaps the wise men wanted Jesus to have good hygiene?)
The Greeks and Romans tried to improve on it, adding bones and oyster shells as an abrasive. (Here I invite you to consider not only how this affected your tooth enamel, but how it affected your gums.) In the early 1700s in France, urine (your own) was considered to be a pretty good option. Sensodyne it wasn’t, but at least they were trying. Oral hygiene has always been serious business. On some level, people have always recognized that dirty teeth are disgusting and bad breath a thing to solve. Assuming a standard level of halitosis for pre-Aquafresh civilizations, bad breath beyond that might have indicated health problems: respiratory issues, liver or kidney issues, or gastrointestinal distress. Early mouthwashes were wine based, which was on the right track, though wine does not contain enough alcohol to kill bacteria. Still, when they took a swig straight from the bottle first thing in the morning, it was just good hygiene and families applauded. When I do it, it’s a problem and there’s an intervention. Here’s a bit of trivia for you: Paul Revere was a dentist. He was more famously an engraver, of course, but the closer the colonies got to revolution, the less valuable his services were. So he took up dentistry to make a little extra money. (It was, at the time, something of a trade, like being a roofer. You apprenticed for a bit and you were set.) World War II was a boon for oral hygiene in the United States. For one thing, soldiers weren’t given the choice to see military dentists: Before you shipped out, someone would be scraping and poking around in your head. This was new, and soldiers complained bitterly about it, but long after the war, such procedures—which included extractions, crowns and dentures—kept American teeth healthy beyond those of previous generations. The war was also good for dentists, who had to do an awful lot with very little, which ultimately improved their techniques. (When you have to extract a tooth but there are no painkillers, you need to be quick and efficient.) The entire profession thus saw an upgrade, including the introduction of new drugs, treatments and practices. In short, when soldiers returned home after the war, they had better teeth and America had better dentists. Just as people have always wanted clean teeth, they’ve always wanted white teeth as W W W. R O U S E S . C O M
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