More dental (fun) facts! :)

China sets aside September 20th as a national holiday known as “Love Your Teeth Day.”

An elephant in the wild consumes hundreds of pounds of vegetation each and every day. The elephant grinds this vegetation with his four large molars, two uppers and two lowers. Because of the tremendous amount of use they receive, they are gradually worn down to the gum line and drop out after about ten years. These are soon replaced by another set of grinding molars. However, there is a six-set limit of molars within an elephants lifetime.

An elephant’s molars measure one foot across and weigh between eight and ten pounds each.

During the 1800s, many people wearing false teeth in England resorted to eating in their bedrooms prior to gathering at the dinner table for a meal. This Victorian custom protected them against the terrible embarrassment of “losing” their teeth while dining.

An ancient theory blamed the “Toothworm” for toothaches. The Toothworm was believed to chew the interior of a tooth until it was destroyed!

The ancient Chinese wrapped tiny pieces of parchment around painful teeth, all of which contained written prayers and incantations.

During the Middle Ages in Germany, you would have been advised to kiss a donkey in order to relieve your toothache.

The ancient Greeks devised pliers for extracting teeth.

Lucy Hobbs was the first woman in the world to earn a D.D.S. degree from a dental school. The year was 1866 and the school was the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati, OH.

Long ago, people used ground-up chalk or charcoal, lemon juice, ashes or even a mixture of tobacco and honey to clean their teeth. It was only about 100 years ago that someone finally created a minty cream to clean teeth.

Taken from http://www.atkinsdentistry.com/