How Old is Dentistry

Horowhenua Chronicle, 10 January 1914, Page 4

How Old is Dentistry

Tooth-pulling is doubtless as ancient a surgical operation, if so it may be called, as is known to. > mankind; but tootii-iiiling is supposed to be a modern invention. The assertion that .Egyptian mummies Have been found with goldlilied teeth is now generally thought to be an error arising out of the fact that the Egyptians j olten gilded tiie teetii of mummies for ornament. But Professor Saville now claims to have found in Ecuador many pre-Az-tec skulls, perhaps a thousand years old, of a type superior to , 1 Aztecs, whose teeth showed botii gold and cement filling. The New York Sun, in describing tins find, says:—"The gold-filled teeth struck him as the most unusual feature of his finds. In Mexico he had dug up skulls with teeth filled or ornamented with stone, but lie had never before seen gold fillings in a prehistoric skull. The gold was on the edges of tfie teeth and I had been applied from the inside. It showed little on the outside, so the purpose appeared to be less for ornamentation than for utility. Some of the teeth were filled with cement. in all cases, whether the fillings were gold or cement, the boring indicated that a tool had been used that did the work possibly as well as the instruments of the modem dentist. Some of the teeth that apparently had been loosened "were held together by gold bands. . . ." a——j—mm—i