The History of Oral Hygiene

Even the ancient people knew about oral hygiene. Here, you may wonder how they could know about it when there were no toothpastes with unlimited flavors available. Well, the matter of fact is that they had some pretty creative solutions at hand to take care of their oral hygiene.

The history of toothbrush

The most common way of cleaning teeth in the ancient times involves use of wooden sticks with frayed ends. This way of cleaning the teeth dates back to 3500 BC when people of Babylonia used feathers, bones, or even porcupine quills to clean interdental portions. Greek and Roman people used these items as toothpicks.

First toothbrush was developed in in China in the late 1400’s. This toothbrush mainly used animal hair attached to the bamboo stick.

In 1780, a man serving a stint in British prison constructed a toothbrush which consisted of bone with hairs as bristles. The bone had small holes drilled in it, and the hairs were inserted in the holes and then glued. This toothbrush became so popular that the prisoner, named William Adis, started manufacturing toothbrushes after serving his time in the jail. His company, named Wisdom Toothbrushes, is still in business.

In 1938, nylon-bristled toothbrushes were introduced by Dupont. These are the toothbrushes that we use in this day and age. First electric toothbrush was invented in Switzerland and introduced to the international market in 1954.

The toothpaste

You may tend to think about ancient people being oblivious to anything that could add flavor and effectiveness to the teeth’s cleaning. But the matter of fact is that the current form of toothpaste is in the current form after going through a lot of permutations and improvements since the ancient times.  In a 4th century Egyptian manuscript, it has been found that people at that time used a mixture of pepper, salt, mint leaves, and iris flowers to clean their teeth. Ox hooves’ ashes and burnt eggshells are found to be the main ingredients of ancient toothpastes. Greeks and Romans used a mixture of Crushed bones and oyster shells in this regard. People in ancient china used Ginseng, mints, and salt.

In today’s era, people may not buy the idea of using above mentioned ingredients as a replacement of toothpaste but there is one thing worth mentioning that people at that time rarely had dental conditions like tooth decay and cavities. But then, another reason for overall good health of their oral cavities was that there were no processed or refined sugars available at that time.

Having that said, it would be important to keep in mind that it is not just the oral hygiene that you have to ensure. You also have to make sure that you avoid everything which can ruin your oral health.