Kissing a donkey and spitting on a frog!

In the throes of agonising toothache, could you imagine kissing the teeth of a living donkey in an attempt to cure yourself? If you can't, that's understandable - but it's exactly what you would have done in the 14th century... and much more besides.

The cures for toothache in the past are difficult to believe and some of them are difficult to stomach. From spitting into the mouth of frog in the hope it would take on your pain for itself to sucking on the freshly extracted tooth of a dead man, past populations would try anything to alleviate the pain of cavities and gum disease.

Until the germ theory of disease was discovered in the late 19th century, how teeth became cavity ridden was a mystery. In 1890, WD Miller discovered that bacteria lived on the surface of the teeth and their acidic waste products could erode the enamel. Prior to this discovery, common lore attributed cavities to a tooth worm. The worm was a popular explanation for dental problems across the globe throughout the ages.  Ancient Babylonian priests are purported to have called upon the sun god Ra to summon the worm for them so that they could banish it with a curse and medieval Europeans would try to smoke the worms out by taking in the (poisonous) fumes of henbane.

Here be monsters: tooth worms and eternal suffering.

Animals, as with many folk cures, lose out in this situation, with common traditional cures for toothache in England including: wearing a necklace made of mole paws and noses, cutting spines off a dogfish or rubbing the afflicted teeth with the burnt brain of a hare or the horn of a hart. Apparently, hare brains rubbed into the gums were also used to aid the safe eruption of infants' teeth. Lovely.

Nineteenth century Americans would even bite snakes, including deadly rattlesnakes, in an attempt to get rid of their toothache. I'm pretty sure that the threat of getting bitten by a rattler would definitely take your mind off the tooth pain, so at least this one might have worked for a short time...




References:
The Teeth in Folklore (1968), Jeri Tanner
Folklore of the Teeh (1934), Leo Kanner
Of the Teeth  (1961), Byrd Howell Granger

Teeth where teeth should not be...

After 23 years of abnormal swelling in her left eye, Nagabhushanam Siva decided to let doctors in Chennai, southern India investigate her condition.  A tumour was diagnosed and an operation was undertaken, only to reveal the presence of two fully formed teeth within the tumour itself. Unfortunately, the tumour had been in place for too long, placing pressure on the optic nerve and leaving it permanently damaged - thus the operation was not successful, leaving Siva blind.

Teeth in the tumour, seen during surgery.
(Cover Asia Press)

This kind of tumour is usually present from birth and is called a 'mature teratoma'*. Disturbingly, they can contain all sorts of misplaced tissue - including hair, teeth and bone. In some cases, the growth can include even more complex organs. As I discovered with not a small amount of horror that such a thing as an 'mature ovarian cystic teratoma' can exist. This is often a mass of disorganised tissue within the ovarian region, but can occasionally form into a 'homunculus' with a generalised human form. In one case study from Japan, such a tumour was found to have 'Brain, eye, spinal nerve, ear, teeth, thyroid gland, bone, bone marrow, gut, trachea, blood vessels, and phallic' tissue (Kuno et al. 2003), arranged in a 'well organised' fashion.

Although such tumours are rare, they contain skeletal and dental tissues which could very well survive in archaeological contexts. A brief search of the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology hasn't turned up any clear examples of such a condition in the past, but I think they could be out there. It's certainly something to keep in mind next time I find some teeth where teeth really shouldn't be...




* Wikipedia informs me that a benign tumour of this nature, in the UK is termed a 'mature teratoma', whilst in the US it's simply referred to as a teratoma. In the UK, a 'teratoma' or 'immature teratoma' refers to a malignant tumour.