May 31 2009
Putting Someone Else’s Teeth in Your Mouth
Dentures may not strike the reader as something so horrific as to be included in “History Horrors,” and I agree it’s nothing like murder or war crimes, but losing one’s teeth is a small horror.
While we’re young we often take our teeth for granted, we even experience losing them one by one which can turn into the ceremonial event whereby one ties a string to the tooth and then to a door. It’s all morbid fun because we know we have replacements growing in. Unfortunately when we grow old and our teeth begin to fall out again, it’s permanent.
That loss has prompted mankind to find some way of re-enabling the elderly to be able to chew again. And tooth loss didn’t mean age 70 back when dental care was a rag you wiped your chompers with. People started losing teeth as early as their twenties due to cavities. Without modern tools, Dentists couldn’t fill the holes, they simply pulled the offending tooth.
Replacement teeth came in various forms: “In the past, false teeth have been made out of ivory, bone, porcelain, and, conveniently enough, actual human teeth, dating from as early as Etruscan civilizations of modern-day Italy in the pre-Roman period around 700 B.C. and on.” This is from Suite101.com.
“Actual human teeth” came from the battlefields. Whenever the dead were lying on the ground and the smoke had cleared, soldiers or scavenging locals would go from body to body to stick their fingers in the mouths of the fallen. If someone with their brains blown out or their intestines spilled on the grass had a nice smile it was time to pull out the pliers.
The only problem with receiving dentures from the dead is that you might get an existing condition, like tooth rot–now that can’t taste good. The other problem with dentures in general, as noted by Suite101.com, is that the body doesn’t recognize them as teeth. It’s wanting to digest them. Therefore the saliva keeps dripping as if you were trying to eat something.
I wonder if there ever has been an incident where a man was killed for his nice teeth? It may be unwritten, but I bet there were more than a few murders related to dentures.
Read more: “A History of Dentures: The Ancient Origins of Dental Hardware | Suite101.com” - http://ancienthistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/a_history_of_dentures#ixzz0H6LVmNOi&A
Now that’s really interesting…and gross…
It wouldn’t surprise me if someone was murdered for their good teeth. Yikes! So it would be a good idea to check before killing the person or check the corpse before sticking anything in your mouth. It does make me wonder how they got them to stay in place. Did they have glue back then?