Michael Sultan discusses ancient natural remedies.
Dentistry is one of those industries that we tend to believe only moves forward. In many ways this is true, and as we enter an age where it’s not unusual to embrace robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) in practice, it’s fair to say that the industry has undergone a significant revolution within recent times.
However, are there still things we can learn from our past?
When we think back to ancient civilisations, we tend to assume that their dentistry was substandard and more about alleviating pain rather than providing aesthetic, long-lasting results. However, research into how dentistry was performed thousands of years ago reveals that cultures from all over the world approached treatment and pain in unique and often interesting ways.
For example, ancient Chinese cultures used acupuncture and moxibustion (the burning of mugwort leaves) to help with dental pain thousands of years ago. Both of these techniques are still used in pain relief today, and while they are not the go-to solutions for dental pain, they are still viable solutions and healing methods that prove ancient civilisations may have been more savvy about dental care than we originally suspected.
In fact, another piece of research that supports this claim is recent insights into ancient Mayan culture. In this civilisation, it wasn’t unusual for individuals to adhere semi-precious stones to their teeth for ritual purposes. These gemstones included jadeite, iron pyrite, hematite, turquoise, quartz, serpentine and cinnabar – all beautiful stones that were evocative of certain religious precepts. However, while these stones were not directly beneficial to oral hygiene, the resin used to adhere them to the teeth was. Extracted from pine trees and other plants, this resin had antibacterial and antifungal properties – actively fighting against tooth plaque and decay. This suggests that these cultures had knowledge of how this resin impacted their oral cavities and knew that they could help avoid decay by using it.
So, why was this information lost and what does it mean for dentistry today?
Recent dentistry was very much about “drill and fill” or extraction, so, in some ways, it is incredible that people who lived thousands of years before were likely to have had a more preventive approach that better mirrors our approach of today.
Whether the pine resin used by the ancient Mayans has applications in preventive dentistry is not something I’m aware of, but we have adopted varnishes and other anti-bacterial methods into modern day care. Plus, with holistic medicine once again heading towards the mainstream, there’s every chance that acupuncture and its benefits could be more widely explored within dentistry in the future, especially as a means of effective pain relief.
In the end, the more we discover about ancient cultures, the better picture we get of how they performed dental care and what this means for dentistry today. Far from the often-barbaric picture we paint of dentistry in the past, these cultures prove that there was an understanding there that we are only just again rediscovering and implementing in modern treatment – a focus on pain alleviation and prevention that are once again becoming the norm.
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