Strange Ways to Relieve Toothaches

Published:January 8th, 2012

Image Credit: caperdaily.com

It is undoubted that people have been having toothaches since the beginning of time and have thus been trying to fix them just as long. Researchers have found empirical proof that tooth drilling first occurred over 9 millennia ago. The procedure seems to have been amazingly accurate and wouldn’t have taken long but there was no anaesthesia back then.

Worms in the Mouth

Even up until the 18th century, people believed that decay and discomfort were caused by worms that burrowed inside the teeth. This is a belief that was carried over from ancient times – references to worms in the teeth have been found in ancient Sumerian texts.

It is widely believed that ancient doctors thought that the nerves in the teeth were the worms. If you think a root canal is barbaric today, consider it back then. Of course, back then the solution was to yank out the whole tooth – nowadays dentists try not to extract teeth to preserve the health of the jaw.

Strange Cures

Some ancient cures bordered on the downright peculiar – Pliny recommended that you catch a frog under a full moon and then spit in its mouth and tell it to carry the toothache away. Chanting was another common method to heal toothaches and in England talismans were created using the teeth of corpses. Some other methods used by our ancestors were:

  • Wearing magical amulets – favoured by the ancient Egyptians.
  • Chewing hot chillies – the Aztec way.
  • Oral fumigation and a hot mouth rinse – the Roman way.
  • Sorcery in Medieval times.
  • Ingestion of sour fruit juice as recommended by the Talmud.

Contemporary Treatments

We now know that toothache is the result of decay and infection. Most toothaches can be fixed during root canal therapy. Dentists take out the infected nerve and pulp and put the tooth back into place, often adding a filling or crown. Pain medication means that nowadays we can be a little surer of pain relief – even if we cannot find any frogs during a full moon.


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