Ancient Dentistry

Tooth extraction was probably the first dentaltreatment in human history, therefore a tooth forceps usually stood out as its symbol. The procedure in these early years was not easy and it posed many risks. Those extracting the teeth prepared several medicaments in order to remove them without pain or to minimize effort. In the ancient medical literature, there are a plethora of references to medicaments that were used for extracting the teeth, and although it seemed like an appealing idea, it did not offer much in painless practice. Only in cases where the pain was unbearable and any effort to relief the process with drugs failed, only then was the tooth forceps used. Just a few forceps have survived in Europe, due to the deterioration of their material used for their construction. The study of instruments that were unearthed came to the conclusion that these surgical instruments which were used not only for tooth extraction but also, for the extraction of arrows and bone fragments.
However, those instruments were not anatomically designed to adapt to the cervix of the tooth. At the same time, the steps of the extraction procedure resembled those used today. At first a sharp surgical instrument was used to separate the tooth from the soft gum tissue. Then, the tooth was grabbed with the forceps and were used in rocking movements. When the tooth was loose enough, they pulled it out using their fingers. In case that this was not possible, the final step for the extraction was done with forceps. Only doctors, usually surgeons, used the forceps. There are also references for root forceps. In Greece, three forceps have been excavated until now. The oldest is dated to the 5th century B.C.

Unprecedented advances in dental knowledge took place during the Roman imperial period. Dioscorides was a leader in the field of traditional dental pharmacology both with his original work "De Materia Medica" and the spurious "Euporista". Thanks to Dioscorides we have an early classification of oral and dental diseases and a greater understanding of dental practice in the first post-Christian centuries. Dioscorides advocated more than 120 drugs for the treatment of toothache and diseases of the gingiva and oral mucosa. Most striking is the use of different verb forms to describe the effects of the drugs he proposes.