 The patron saint of dentists is St. Apollonia, who reportedly had her teeth pulled out in 249 AD by an anti-Christian mob.
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The discovery of nylon in 1938 promised to revolutionize the toothbrush just in time for World War II, but the bristles of Dr. West’s Miracle Tuft Toothbrush released that year were stiff enough to be a painful hazard to the gums; it wasn’t until the early 1950s that a safe, soft nylon bristle became the standard. Since then, more than 2,000 toothbrushes have been patented across the world.
Proctor
& Gamble was the first company to put fluoride in toothpaste in 1956.
In a brilliant ad campaign that’s still quoted 40 years later, kids
ran into the house brandishing notes from their dentist and screaming,
“Look ma, no cavities!” Grand Rapids, Michigan had 20 years
earlier been the first US city to deliberately add fluoride to city water
to reduce cavities. Other cities followed suit to a point that nearly
2/3 of the US population now has fluoridated water, despite warnings from
right-wing fearmongers that fluoride was a communist plot to produce a
generation of drugged and mind-controlled zombies. (Hm, look around you
— maybe they were right after all?) |
Dentists
discovered the positive effects of fluoride on teeth in 1802 when they
noticed that the citizens of fluoride-rich Naples, Italy had brown mottled
teeth but few cavities. By the 1840s, some Europeans sucked honey-flavored
fluoride lozenges to prevent tooth decay, but the idea of adding the chemical
to toothpaste was still a century away. Instead, manufacturers started
adding soap in 1824 and chalk in the 1850s. In 1892, Dr. Washington Sheffield
of Connecticut was the first to put toothpaste into tubes like those used
for oil paint.