Put a Frog in Your Mouth: Toothache 'Cures' from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Ireland.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, toothache must have been a common complaint in Ireland, to judge from the number of toothache 'cures' reported as part of The Schools' Collection (SC) or 'Bailiúchán na Scol', a folklore-collecting scheme that was undertaken in the Irish Republic in 1937 and 1938, and upon which this article is based. These cures range from quasi-medical treatments, such as packing the affected tooth with tobacco, to more folkloric, or magico-religious cures, such as licking a frog or pulling out a tooth from a corpse, as well as herbal and mineral remedies.

Did Richard III pray to Saint Apollonia for relief from toothache?

Richard III is known to have had a particular devotion to St Apollonia who is the Patron Saint of sufferers from toothache. The dentition in his skeleton exhumed from a car park in Leicester shows missing teeth which are thought to have been extracted due to caries. It is suggested that Richard, when he was Duke of Gloucester, had prayed to St Apollonia for the relief of toothache before submitting to undergo dental extractions.

Sair teeth-the hell o'a' diseases.

A discussion of a poem about toothache, written in Scots and published in 1917 and a comparing it to Robert Burns' Address to the Toothache.

Classical music and the teeth.

Teeth and their pathologies are frequent themes in classical music. The teeth have inspired popular songwriters such as Thomas Crecquillon, Carl Loewe, Amilcare Ponchielli & Christian Sinding; as well as composers whose works are still played all over the world, such as Robert Schumann and Jacques Offenbach. This paper examines several selections in which the inspiring theme is the teeth and the pain they can cause, from the suffering of toothache, to the happier occasion of a baby's first tooth.

[The oral problems of queen Elizabeth I]. / De mondproblemen van koningin Elizabeth I.

Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603), probably the most famous English Queen ever, had persistent oral problems. Her oral problems were so serious that they probably hampered the Queen in the performance of her tasks.

Mosquitoes, flies and dental cavities: Dr. Howard Riley Raper's public campaign to prevent toothache.

Dr. Howard Riley Raper (1886-1978) was an early oral health pioneer and dental roentgenology faculty member of the Indiana Dental College (IDC) who single-handedly introduced key concepts in radiology to dentistry. Due to his efforts, IDC became in 1910-11 the first dental school to have a regular course in dental radiology. Virtually all American dental schools soon added this subject to their regular curriculum. Raper's text, Elementary and Dental Radiography (1913) became the first comprehensive student textbook of dental X-ray diagnosis. In his 1933 Blue Book entitled, The New Aim in the Care of the Teeth, Raper elaborated upon his mission to prevent caries, by comparing the insidious damages of tooth decay with the threat of insect-borne disease.

Caelius Aurelianus' textbook on medicine of the fifth century: rhythm in asthma, pain, and drug effects.

Caelius Aurelianus was a Greek-Roman physician in the fifth century. He translated the work of Soranus from Ephesus into Latin and extended the medical knowledge of his time in several textbooks. His book "De Morbis acutis et chronicis" was reprinted many times up to the 19th century and served as the handbook for physicians. Aurelianus aready described in detail the rhythmic pattern - daily and seasonally - of asthma. Tooth pain was also first described by Caelius Aurelianus to peak at night and that drugs were not able to fully suppress the pain, a first indication of chronopharmacology.

A history of arsenic in dentistry.

The history of the use of arsenic in dentistry has been relegated to dental history. Once hailed as a panacea for the relief of pain and the answer to root canal therapy, it soon fell out of use mainly because of its misuse by unskilled and unscrupulous dentists in search of a quick fix to a complex problem. Such is the story of arsenic.

,, da mir Zahnschmerz unausstehlich ist".

Little is known about the people who suffered from toothache or other dental illnesses in the 19th century. This is, in part, due to the lack of sources describing individual experiences with such ailments. The patient journals of the homoeopath Clemens Maria Franz von Bönninghausen (1785­1864), who practiced in Münster in Westphalia between 1829 and 1864, offer the possibility of learning more about patients in the field of dental care and medicine. Whilst practising, Bönninghausen treated more than 27,000 patients. The entries he made about 14,266 of them were transcribed in a database which provides a rich source of information about the clientele the homoeopath had, their illnesses and their behaviour during medical treatment. 785 patients told the homoeopath that they had problems with their teeth. Some only vaguely said that they had some kind of ache, whilst others described pulling, stabbing, searing or even burning and itching sensations. The majority of these people also had tried other cures before. In some cases, teeth already had been pulled out without improving the situation. Therefore the entries in the patient journals are proof of the demand for dental care and treatment and the growing awareness of people towards their dental health. But during their search for a cure, they not only consulted the trained dentists who could, in most cases, only offer unsuccessful treatments. This clashed with the attempts by these trained specialists to improve their social status and professionalisation.

Shirley Jackson's "The Tooth": Dentistry as Horror, the Imagination as a Shield.

On her way to a dreaded dental appointment to have an aching tooth pulled, Clara Spencer meets a solicitous stranger, Jim, and by the end of the story runs off with him, in many interpretations to perdition. But since 1) Shirley Jackson (who herself had much dental work and hated it) has suffered from typecasting as a horror writer, 2) dental gas anesthesia protocols of the time as Clara is anticipating could lead to sexual hallucinations, and 3) contemporary literature celebrated escapist fantasy (e.g., the invisible giant rabbit in Harvey), this article proposes instead that Jim is Clara's own imaginative, comforting, therapeutic creation.

Dental quackery: a retrospective view.

Instances of dental quackery are easy to spot in history, but what qualifies as quackery in contemporary dentistry? A historical perspective leads to an evaluation of questionable practices in the field today.

Queen Elizabeth I and her teeth.

Throughout her life, Elizabeth I encountered problems with her teeth or lack of them. The anecdote involving Bishop Aylmer in 1578, Strype's account of which being rarely, if ever, quoted in full, and Hentzner's description of her two decades later are well-known, but are by no means the only references to her personal dental history. In a number of biographical studies, the saga of her toothache has been treated as no more than an amusing anecdote, but secondary sources show frequent errors, through either patchwork, imaginativeness or omission. This paper seeks to present a more comprehensive picture of Elizabeth's dental history, so primary sources, quoted as fully as possible, have been allowed to speak for themselves. No assessment has been attempted of the effects of the clinical circumstances upon political decisions or indecision.

Dental treatment in Medieval England.

Medieval (12th-14th century) medical literature suggests that care of the teeth was largely limited to non-invasive treatment. Cures, mainly for toothache and "tooth worm" were based on herbal remedies, charms and amulets. Bloodletting was advised for certain types of toothache. There is also documentary evidence for powders to clean teeth and attempts at filling carious cavities. Surgical intervention for oral cancer and facial fracture is also known. Post-operative infection and abscess formation can be identified and early forms of false teeth are mentioned.

Toothache--the 'hell of all diseases'.

Last year was the bicentenary of the death of Robert Burns, who is Scotland's best known poet. January 25, Burns' birth date, is also a well-known celebration to the Scottish-the famous 'Burns Night'. Burns wrote many songs and poems, but his 'Address to the Toothache' is of particular interest to dentists. The poem provides a vivid account of one man's experience of toothache and gives an insight into how people regarded pain two hundred years ago.

Dental pain and suffering prior to the advent of modern dentistry.

In Prehistoric and Mediaeval times few dentitions in this country remained intact much after the age of 40-45 years. The point is made that dental caries and periodontal disease played little part in this early disintegration and it is unlikely that the population of this time suffered severely with their teeth. A change in dietary habits in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century measurably increased the lifespan of the dentition, but also radically altered the prevalence of caries. This change is likely to have been responsible for a vast increase in dentally-related pain and suffering which was only capable of being tackled as a social problem by the advent of modern dentistry.

Representations of St Apollonia in British churches.

St Apollonia is the patron saint of sufferers from toothache. Many medieval churches contain pictures of saints. Fifty-five representations of St Apollonia in British churches are listed. A large number of these are in the West Country and East Anglia. The majority are on rood screens or stained glass windows.

Dental chapters of Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu's (1385-1468?) illustrated surgical book Cerrahiyyetu'l Haniyye.

From the 7th to the 11th centuries Arabic authors translated ancient Greek and Roman medical textbooks into their own languages. In the 11th and 12th centuries, noted authors used these early translations when writing other classical texts. One of these was that of the Andalusian surgeon, Albulcasis (936-1013), whose famous work is entitled, at-Tasrif (4,6). It has been used as a reference book for centuries and was translated into Latin in the 15th century and into Turkish by me when I discovered a manuscript of it in the Manisa Library in Turkey (14). The best interpreter of it, however, was Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu (1365-1468). He used the classification of at-Tasrif, but improved on it by adding original observations and three original chapters. His book is entitled, Cerrahiyyetu'l Haniyye which means The Imperial Surgery (15).