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Laurence Bohan
Content Writer
Laurence Bohan
Content Writer

Laurence is a copywriter and trained journalist. His passion is creating insightful and educational content for dental professionals of every level. Outside of work, he enjoys watching sport, quizzing and spending time with his family.

Remember the days when if you had a toothache, you’d have to go see your barber about it? Though this might sound like something straight out of Sweeney Todd, it was in fact the norm only a few centuries ago.

Wooden dentures, beeswax fillings and cocaine anaesthetic were all a thing once upon a time and were even considered revolutionary for their time. All this seems a world away from the safer, patient-sensitive and more aesthetically-focused industry we know today.

While there is no doubt that dentistry has come a long way from the days of being able to have a tooth removed whilst getting a short back and sides, there does appear scope for further advances in the profession to bring it up to speed technologically with other industries.

What was causing these dental cavities thousands of years ago, nobody could be completely sure of, but if you asked the ancient Sumerians and various other cultures, it was tooth worms that would gnaw away at the teeth and gums.

The tale of the tooth worm continued for centuries all the way up to the 14th century AD and the time of surgeon Guy de Chauliac.

How Dentistry Has Evolved

French surgeon, Pierre Fauchard, and his ground-breaking 1728 guide to dental care titled ‘The Surgeon Dentist’, is considered by many the basis of modern dentistry. The book touches on ideas regarding oral anatomy, restoring teeth and creating dentures. Putting his ideas into practice, Fauchard (pictured) is credited with being a pioneer in dental prosthetics thanks to his suggestions that carved ivory or bone could be used to replace lost teeth and his introduction of dental braces using gold wire to correct the positioning of teeth. On top of this, Fauchard is also said to have introduced dental fillings as treatment for dental cavities and it was his visionary assertions that sugar derived acids were what was causing dental decay. Advances in dentistry continued over the next two and half centuries, with the list below only some of those milestones.

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