The Roots of Dentistry

Dentistry as a profession

Origins

Dentistry of one kind or another was practised among ancient civilisations including Egypt and Babylonia. The Greeks and Romans commonly fabricated primitive false teeth made from sets of bone or ivory while the Mayan civilisation in America perfected insets of often elaborate and beautifully carved turquoise or jadeite components.

Cures for toothache were often unscientific. Pliny, for example, wrote that the best method was to capture a frog in the light of the full moon and to spit into its mouth, incanting the sentence, 'Frog, take toothache away'. Regrettably, no reliable records survive attesting to its efficacy.