Dental check-ups are not the most pleasant activity for most people. Even so, it doesn’t have to be all pain and discomfort… There’re lots of fun facts about dental check-ups that may make your day a little less awful.
Do you want to make fun of dental check-ups and take the fear away? Just like a curious spell cast in the Harry Potter series… You just need to ridicule these inspections, and they’ll be harmless!
So, what about we begin with these 5 fun facts about dental check-ups?
- Barbers and blacksmiths vs. cavities
Believe it or not, back in 1800, if you needed a dental check-up, but regular dentists were not in your budget, you had another cheaper option…
You could arrange a tooth extraction and other hygiene procedure by the hand of lay-barbers (also known as surgeon barbers) or even blacksmiths.
They could fill your cavities with all sorts of things like gum, resin, and even stone pieces!
- The medieval donkey treatment
If you were a commoner living in the middle age, chances were you’d got some teeth issues. Back then, if you could see a trained dentist –or if you had to go to a barber- for a toothache, you were most likely to be prescribed the donkey treatment!
Can you guess what it is? We bet you don’t… The treatment consisted in KISSING a donkey to get rid of the pain in your teeth… How did they come up with the idea that worked? We don’t know!
- We knew Check-ups were important ever since Ancient Egypt!
Dental check-ups were obviously not for everyone back in ancient times. Even so, dental hygiene is so obviously vital to human health that we have practised it since the golden days of Egypt… It was then that the first dentist was born.
His name was Hesi-ren, and he was a “doctor of the tooth” who treated most likely the high classes of society… There’s a reason why we’ve been getting dental check-ups all over our history! Set your appointment now!
- The first dental hygienist was a woman
Today, we know that dental hygienists are not doctors but are perfectly trained to clean our teeth. This was not possible until 1905, as the figure of hygienist didn’t exist; only dentists could perform any dental treatment.
That was the year dental assistant Irene Newman became the first hygienist. Doctor Alfred Fones trained her. He taught her how to clean teeth and perform other minor procedures on children, changing the history of dental check-ups for good!
- Dental wedding gift
Less time ago than you think, dental check-ups were one of the most post-marital activities in the British Isles. Why?
People there had the belief that they would lose all their teeth at a young age, so they prepared an even earlier extraction –to beat time? We don’t know.
Therefore, one popular wedding gift was a shiny new denture. What better way to spend a wedding night than at the dentist?
As you can see, there’s more to dental check-ups than just fear and pain… I hope you enjoyed these five fun facts about dental check-ups!
