Ancient Dental Practices
Edited by: Sylvia Tomas-Joaquin, DMD
Long before Dentistry came into our civilized world,
man had already been preoccupied with the quality of
his smile.
They did all sorts of practices that can be interpreted
today as strange, like:
 Chipping or filling of teeth
 Blackening them
 Decorating them with gold and precious stones.
Religious Ceremonies and Rituals
 An aspect so important in life before modernity,
didn’t spare teeth
The Jakun Tribe of Malaysia
 Supplements the different embellishments on his
face and body by filing the front surfaces of the 6
upper anterior teeth to make them concave.
o Some even color them black.
Actually, the practice of filling to points
 Was widely practiced throughout the world from
Asia to Africa.
 There was even an allegation that Australian
aborigines filed their teeth to points so they could
easily bite on people.
WARRIOR
Warriors of Kroe, Benkulen, in Sumatra, desired to
emulate the sharp teeth of rats to distinguish
themselves from non-warrior males of their tribes.
Well, in Indonesia
 Filing of teeth has a deep significance as a form of
initiation at puberty.
o When a young girl or boy of a high caste
family reaches the age of puberty, a ceremony
was held to announce his or her status as an
adult.
o Part of the ceremony was the filing of the
upper teeth into an even line done by a
specialist, usually a brahmana.
The reason was to diminish the 6 evil qualities of
human nature:
 Desire
 Greed
 Anger
 Intoxication
 Irresoluteness
 Jealousy
Thomas Raffles
 Narrated in the book published in 1755
 The History of Java:
o “In common with the Sumatrans and other
inhabitants of the Archipelago and southern
part of the peninsula, both sexes of the ranks
have the custom of filling and blackening the
teeth, it being considered as disgraceful to
allow them to remain ‘white like a dog’s’… the
Javans, however, do not file away the teeth so
much as is usual with some of the islanders;
nor do they set them in gold, as in the case
with the Sumatrans.”
It also has to do with prevailing sense of beauty. It was
stylish for them to file their teeth like the
 Efe tribes deep in the rainforests of Africa.
 In Bali, accordingly,
o Teeth were filed because the natives will not
be able to enter the spirit world if their teeth
were as long and pointed as the animals.
o In fact, even corpse’s teeth were filed before
cremation so they will not look like a demon
in the spirit world.
Tribes like the Kadars and Malavetans of India
 Chipped their teeth in the form of serrated cones
for the purposes distinguishing themselves from
other tribes who also practiced filing of teeth.
The “Batak” Malays (a Mid-Sumatran tribe)
 Were said to have chipped the teeth of their
children into the desired shape with the use of
chisel. The operation caused agony that the child
usually shrieked leaping to his feet.
Whetstone
 The usual instrument for filing of teeth.
The Aetas of the Philippines
 Used chisel specially made for the purpose and the
chipping was done precisely with one swift
movement to lessen the agony, after they bite into
a layer of banana trunk to prevent sensitivity.
The practice of blackening of teeth
 Revolved around the animalistic rituals with their
belief that only animals have white teeth.
The Malays
 Believed that blackened teeth were not only good
to look at, but were also preserved from the action
of decay.
o They first filed the labial surfaces with
whetstone to better receive the dye which
was usually made up of empyreumatic oil of
the cocoa nut shell.
o The practice later evolved in Bali with only the
molars blackened, leaving the incisors white.
Dyeing of teeth black
 Had been widely practiced in many Asian countries.
“When discovered, most of the tribes were a race of
half-naked savages inferior to all the great tribes… one
sultana was fairly pretty, or had been so, but the
remainder as heavy, languid and lazy in their
movements; and their teeth dyed black, did not
embellish their personal appearance.” (From History of
Indian Archipelago by John Crawford & The Philippine
IslandsbyJohn Joreman)
Thus described were the Filipinos at the time of decay, the men also practiced blackening their
European colonizers. teeth.

The “Tasadays” Ornamentation of Teeth

 The Stone Age tribe persisting to these days,
practice blackening of their teeth, also believing Common throughout the world
that the only animals have white teeth.  The ancient practice of ornamenting teeth
 Principally the upper incisors, with inlays of gold
Ralph Fitch and even stones such as:
 Merchant-adventurer o Jade
 The first Englishman to have visited Burma o Turquoise
(present-day Myanmar) o Obsidian
 Who visited the Kingdom of Pegu in 1586 o Crystals
 He reportedly saw the people of Pegu
o Both men and women with black teeth. Archeological Evidences
 Practice abounded in Mexico
The Manu ethnic group of Burma  The custom of which was practiced by the Mayans
 Stained their teeth black because they wanted their
teeth to be like the teeth of the rice grasshopper Sumatran Men
whose teeth were black.  Dyed their upper teeth black
o To stain their teeth, they used the bark of  Covered the lower ones with fine gold inlays
Indian Jack trees and the juice of fresh lime. In full light, such combination produced fine contrast.
They boiled the mixture, let it cool, and for 3
days, rinsed their mouth with the mixture. In the Philippines
 Antonio Pigafetta
One interesting way of blackening teeth was practiced o The Italian chronicler of Magellan’s voyage
by the Ah-kha ethnic group of Eastern Burma. o Wrote that in Caraga (Northern Mindanao),
 They kept sour fruits in their mouths for many they met a native chief who “…had three spots
hours until the teeth become sensitive, after which, of gold in every tooth appeared as if bound
they applied juice from barks of some trees to their with gold.”
teeth.
o It was believed that such practice prevented Filipinos practiced the art of golden smile
the onset of decay.
Betel Nut Chewing
In Japan
 The practice of dyeing teeth with black pigment was Chewing of Betel Nut
called “Ohaguro”.  Was the first gesture of hospitality and main social
o It was one of the symbols of female virtue pastime of the many people of Asia
which required a married woman to have their o Burmese
eyebrows plucked; her teeth dyed black, and o Indians
serve no man other than her husband. o Malaysians
o Singaporeans
The pigment o Filipinos
 Consisted of tannic ferric salt.
 How to make the pigment was handed down from  The tradition could be traced to hundreds of years
one generation to the next. ago
o According to a marble inscription “1248 A.D.”
The practice was prevalent during the Edo period; o Captioned Anata Pinnya
 The attributes of the beauty then being described o Found: Burma
as “glinting black teeth, long slitted eyes and frail
appearance.” Betel Nut Chewers
 Had comparatively good teeth
Accordingly, there seems to have been a custom
 that when one’s daughter was engaged to a man, The Malayans
the parents called on their neighbor asking for the  Nearly free of tooth decay
Ohaguro solution,  Though they are fond of sweets a may be
 Thus notifying their neighbor of their daughter’s  Their diet consisted mainly of
coming marriage. o Rice
o other starchy food
 It was therefore, a practice that distinguished  Possible explanation: may be
married women from single ladies. o The alkalinity of the lime
 Later, when it was found that those with o The astringent properties of the tannin
blackened teeth reached old age without tooth o Gallic acid in the nut acts prophylactic against
decay
The social status or the official rank of a host could be
possibly gauged by
 The type
 Quality of the betel salver which he used
Among the nobles of Thailand
 The betel container
o was called “xrob”
o Gold
In the case of highest ranks
 The container was covered with diamonds or
precious stones
o Constantly held by a servant
 Who is ready to hand it to the master at
the slightest sign of his desire to chew the
betel nut preparation.
Religious Oral Practice
A number of oral traditions sprung from religious
beliefs as in the case of prescribed oral health care
among Buddhists and Moslems
While many tribes in Asia and Africa
 embellished their teeth with god and precious
stones, or chipped their teeth, or blackened them,
 Moslems all over the world rejected such practices
as an “alteration of God’s creation”
In the early years of Islam
 The compensation for a knocked tooth came to 5
camels, a 20th of what was paid for, for the life of a
man.
 Restraints were imposed on the development of
the surgical procedures by the teachings of Islam
because dissection of corpses and even pictorial
representation of the human body were forbidden;
 thus, the possibility for anatomical research was
greatly limited.
 A version to blood placed limits on any surgical
activity.
You shall clean your mouth for this is a means of
praising God.
Muhammad
 The Prophet
 Urged his followers to practice oral prophylaxis:
o “You shall clean your mouth, for this is a
means of praising God.”
 In his Canon Law
o Certain rituals were to be observed before a
Moslem said his prayers 5 times a day lest his
prayers be considered false. This means that a
Moslem has to wash his hands, mouth, face,
nose, ears, neck, and feet 3 times before each
prayer.
 The prophet said that “ A prayer which is preceded
by the use of a toothpick was worth 75 ordinary
prayers” as “one of the effects of the toothpick is
that it makes the devil angry; it is pleasant to God
but hated by Satan.”
The toothpick mentioned
 Was the stick taken from the Arak tree (Salvadora
persica), also called the toothbrush tree.
o The tree grows wild in certain regions of the
Arabian Desert and the twigs and sometimes
roots are used for the purpose of cleaning
teeth is called “siwak”.
Moslems
 Frayed the sticks to fibers by immersing them in
water for 24 hours and applying to the teeth just
like our toothbrushes.
o Besides cleaning the teeth, siwak gives them a
shiny appearance and its agreeable taste
increases the low of saliva.
o After days of its use, the fibers get soft and all
one had to do was cut off the bristles and use
the fresh end.
Pilgrims
 Visiting Mecca always dip their supply of sticks of
Arak tree into the sacred well, a Zam-sam.
The Japanese Culture
 Was greatly influenced by Buddhism from India and
Confucianism from China.
 The influence included the oral habits of Japanese
people in the 13th century,
o The time that a Buddhist monk by the name of
Dogen lived and
 wrote “Shobogenzo” or “The Treasury of
the True Darma Eye.”
 The book was crystallization of Dogen’s
religious philosophy and it devoted
chapters on such practical behaviors as
 “cleansing”
 “face-washing”.
 These chapters explained how to clean
oneself or wash one’s mouth, quoting
from the sutras that for one master the
True Way of Buddha, he must be clean
both inside and outside.
Dogen
 Encouraged his followers to use tufted wooden
brush in cleansing their teeth.
 Toothbrushing instructions first spread among the
priests teaching Buddhism and then to the elite of
the society, then to the masses.
 A prayer was usually chanted before brushing:
“When you use a wooden brush, you should pray to
the masses, and polish the teeth with crunching
desire in order to achieve the real Buddhism.”
Both medicine and religion in India have done much to
focus attention to the teeth. Hindus consider the teeth
as “gateway to the body” insisting that they be kept
scrupulously clean. No Hindu would take breakfast
without cleaning his teeth first, the tongue and the
whole mouth, believing that body ailments were caused
by bad breath.
The Brahmins
 Rubbed their teeth for about an hour while facing
the sun reciting their prayers and invoking
heaven’s blessings on themselves and their
families.
The importance of teeth in Buddhist religion
 is greatly manifested in their veneration of
Buddha’s tooth.
According to the tradition
 The tooth was rescued from the flowers at the
cremation of Gautama Buddha at Kusinara in India
in 543.
o It was brought to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the 4th
century A.D. when the King of Kalinga, in
whose personal care, the relic had lain, was in
fear of invasion from his hostile neighbors.
o Summoning his daughter, Princess Hemamali,
the King commissioned her to take over the
relic escorted by her husband, to Ceylon for
safe keeping.
o Disguised as pilgrims, the royal personages
found their way to Ceylon with the relic
concealed in the princess’ coiffure.
The King of Ceylon
 Received the relic with all the reverence due to it.
 Successive monarchs continued to bestow
reverence and personal attention to it. With the
establishment of the Sinhalese Kingdom in Kandy,
the tooth relic found a permanent home in in the
Dalada Maligawa.
It was said that the tooth relic
 Was captured by the Portuguese in 1560, taken to
Goa for its destruction as the tooth relic embodied
idolatry.
 Conflicting stories about its rescue abounded as the
tooth relic was said to possess the faculty of
miraculously producing itself in order to cope with
the needs of a growing religion.
 Duplicates were likewise brought to Burma
(Myanmar) where temples were erected for its
veneration.
Even to this day, one of the most spectacular pageants
in Asia
 Is the annual festival known as “Kandy Esala
Perahera”
o Where the casket bearing the “original” tooth
relic is borne on an elephant.
o Conducted in the lunar month of Esala (July or
early August) of the Buddhist calendar, the
pageant lasting 11 days is one unvarying
center of faith through good and bad periods
in the history of Buddhism.
Primeval or aboriginal races have venerated the tooth,
and in few cases looked at it with awe.
Among the Australian aborigines
 It was the general practice to knock out 1 or more
of a boy’s front teeth during secret ceremonies if
initiation to which every male member was obliged
to submit for him to enjoy the rights and privilege s
of a fully grown man.
 Nearly all known aboriginal tribes in Australia and
New Zealand practice this custom but they differed
in the manner and sentiments by which they
disposed or kept the avulsed teeth.
The natives
 Believed that sympathetic relation continued to
exist between the boy and the knocked-out teeth.
 The tribe of New South Wales
o had a custom of placing the knocked-out tooth
under the bark of a tree adjacent to either a
river or a well; and if the bark grew over the
tooth or if the tooth fell into the water, it was
taken as a good omen that the boy would live
well into adulthood.
Curing Dental Practices
The Chinese
 were making remarkable contributions to human
progress since ancient times, and it is not surprising
that Dentistry in China had an early start as
evidenced by
o their use of arsenic in relieving toothache
about the 2nd century A.D.
o They developed silver amalgam for fillings long
before Dentistry in the West discovered its
use.
o Early writings indicated that full dentures were
being constructed by the Chinese during the
12th century.
The earliest report of a cleft lip operation
 was in an ancient monograph;
 the operation was performed during the Ch’in
dynasty (255-206 B.C.)
But despite their long history, the Chinese are still being
treated by traditional doctors
 using the principle of Yin and Yang.
o This theory of diseases and their cures is akin
to the Hippocratic theory of the cardinal
humors and their relation to the disease
process.
o The Chinese rely upon the vital principle of
Ch’i or “spirit” which could be drawn out or
replenished with the use of acupuncture
needles, much like the Greek practice of
drawing out blood.
Charted in the body are more than 360 pressure points
or acupoints thought to be directly linked to the
internal organs;
and 116 of these are believed to be connected to the
teeth to the teeth and other oral structures.
This method of acupuncture is said to be effective in the
treatment of practically all oral ailments.
To supplement acupuncture,
 moxibustion is also employed whereby
inflammation in the mouth is localized such as that
brought about by cautery.
 The rationale is that the fire used being Yang, it will
counter the excess of Yin.
Mainstay in Chinese (including the Koreans) traditional
medicine
 is the herbs, the most popular of which is ginseng.
o Believed to be effective in treating various
ailments, the aromatic roots of ginseng is
dispensed in the form of teas, powders and
pills, to be taken in combination with other
herbs.
Traditional Indian medicine is based on the notion that
 there are 700 vessels body that carry the 3 basic
principles, and any derangement of these principles
will result into disease.
 Indian surgeons recommended bloodletting with
leeches because they believed that bad blood
caused diseases of the mouth.
But there were also other remedies to toothache, like
 scarification enemas
 use of mouthwashes
 ointments
 sneeze-inducing materials.
Vagbhata
 A surgeon
 who lived about 650 A.D.,
 described killing the “tooth worm” to which
toothache was attributed, with the use of wax.
o The cavity was filled with wax and with the use
of a heated probe, the wax burned out in the
cavity.
o If the pain still persisted he recommended
extraction with specially designed forceps;
 the beak of which was shape like an
animal’s head.
 In a plank of soft wood, a number of holes were
made and into each hole a plug of wood simulating
a tooth was forced.
The plank of wood
 was then placed on the ground, and the student
was told to seize with the thumb and first finger of
his right hand the plugs and pull them out one by
one without moving the plank.
 After practicing for several times in the soft plank
wood, a harder wood with plugs more tightly placed
was substituted. When the student succeeded with
the last test, he was deemed fit to practice
Dentistry.
The universal medicine for treating toothache
 is the oil of cloves.
 Its use dates back to the 3rd century B.C. and
continues to be used today in the form of eugenol
mixed with zinc oxide powder.
Cloves
 are dried flower buds of a tree in the myrtle family
that grows in the Moluccas islands of Indonesia.
 It reaches up to 40 feet high and procedures tiny
bright red flowers, the oil of which when distilled
induces magical relief to toothache.
It was said that in China
 when subjects were awaiting an audience with the
Emperor, they were required to suck cloves to mask
breath odors.
 It was the Arabs who made cloves famous in the
West when Arab merchants, familiar with the cloves
value as toothache and spice for food, brought
them to Europe.
 The spice trade inspired the exploration to the East.

In Japan
 dental treatment from the 6th to the mid-18th
centuries was provided by a variety of medical
practitioners, and relief from toothache was sought
in
o acupuncture
o moxibustion
o cautery
o use of charms and incantations.
o If all else failed, extraction was resorted to.

Japanese dentists
 who travelled the country were said to have been
experts in extracting teeth using only fingers.
 Very interesting is the manner by which these
travelling dentists were trained.