Family Dental Care
5000 B.C. - A Sumerian scroll written around this date describes "tooth worms" as the cause of dental decay.
2600 B.C. - This is the earliest known reference to a person being identified as a dental practitioner of family dental care.
500-300 B.C. - Hippocrates and Aristotle write about dentistry.
100 B.C. - Celsus, a Roman medical practitioner, writes extensively in his important compendium of medicine on oral hygiene, stabilization of loose teeth, family dental care and treatments for toothache, jaw fractures and even teething pain.
166-201 A.D. - The Etruscans practice family dental care prosthetics using gold crowns and fixed bridgework.
500-1000 A.D. - During the Early Middle Ages in Europe - medicine, surgery, and family dental care, are generally practiced by monks, who, sadly, were the only educated people of the period.
700 - A medical text from China mentions the use of "silver paste," a type of filling in family dental care.
1130-1163 - A series of Papal edicts prohibit monks from performing any type of surgery, bloodletting, family dental care or tooth extraction. After the edicts, barbers assume the monks' surgical duties: bloodletting, lancing abscesses, extracting teeth, family dental care etc.
1210 - A Guild of Barbers is established in France.
1400s - A series of royal decrees in France prohibit lay barbers from practicing all surgical procedures except bleeding, cupping, leeching, and extracting teeth.
1530 - The "Little Medicinal Book for All Kinds of Diseases and Infirmities of the Teeth" by Artzney Buchlein, is the first book to be devoted entirely to dentistry and family dental care and is published in Germany.
1575 - In France Ambrose Pare publishes his Complete Works. This includes practical information about dentistry such as tooth extraction, basic dental care and the treatment of tooth decay.
1746 - Claude Mouton describes a gold crown and post to be retained in the root canal. He is a proponent of white enameling for gold or silver crowns for a more realistic appearance.
1760 - John Baker, the earliest medically-trained dentist to practice family dental care in America.
1760-1780 - Isaac Greenwood practices as the first native-born American dentist.
1768-1770 - Paul Revere places advertisements in a Boston newspaper offering his services as a dentist.
1790 - The first chair made specifically for dental patients.
Dental History 101:
(Early Dental History)