Chronology of "HISTORY OF DENTISTRY"

Toothbrush fashioned from a tree branch

5000 BC - A Sumerian text of this date describes tooth worms as the cause of dental decay.

2600 BC - Death of Hesy-Re, an Egyptian scribe, often called the first "dentist." An inscription on his tomb includes the title "the greatest of those who deal with teeth, and of physicians." This is the earliest known reference to a person identified as a dental practitioner.

500-300 BC - Hippocrates and Aristotle write about dentistry, including the eruption pattern of teeth, treating decayed teeth and gum disease, extracting teeth with forceps, and using wires to stabilize loose teeth and fractured jaws.

100 BC - Celsus, a Roman medical writer, writes extensively in his important compendium of medicine on oral hygiene, stabilization of loose teeth, and treatments for toothache, teething pain, and jaw fractures.

166-201 AD - The Etruscans practice dental prosthetics using gold crowns and fixed bridgework.

Mayan jade inlay in an anterior tooth, circa A.D. 900

500-1000 - During the Early Middle Ages in Europe medicine, surgery, and dentistry, are generally practiced by monks, the most educated people of the period

700 - A medical text in China mentions the use of "silver paste," a type of amalgam
.

1210 - A Guild of Barbers is established in France. Barbers eventually evolve into two groups: surgeons who were educated and trained to perform complex surgical operations; and lay barbers, or barber-surgeons, who performed more routine hygienic services including shaving, bleeding and tooth extraction.

1530 - The Little Medicinal Book for All Kinds of Diseases and Infirmities of the Teeth (Artzney Buchlein), the first book devoted entirely to dentistry, is published in Germany. Written for barbers and surgeons who treat the mouth, it covers practical topics such as oral hygiene, tooth extraction, drilling teeth, and placement of gold fillings.

1723 - Pierre Fauchard, a French surgeon publishes The Surgeon Dentist, A Treatise on Teeth (Le Chirurgien Dentiste). Fauchard is credited as being the Father of Modern Dentistry because his book was the first to describe a comprehensive system for the practice of dentistry including basic oral anatomy and function, operative and restorative techniques, and denture construction.

1746 - Claude Mouton describes a gold crown and post to be retained in the root canal. He also recommends white enameling for gold crowns for a more esthetic appearance.

Set of dentures made for George Washington by John Greenwood, 1798.

1789 - Nicolas Dubois de Chemant receives the first patent for porcelain teeth.

1790 - John Greenwood, son of Isaac Greenwood and one of George Washington's dentists, constructs the first known dental foot engine. He adapts his mother's foot treadle spinning wheel to rotate a drill.

1871 - The first electric dental engine, a self-contained motor and handpiece.

1825 - Samuel Stockton begins commercial manufacture of porcelain teeth. His S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company establishes and dominates the dental supply market throughout the 19th century.

1871 -The first electric dental engine, a self-contained motor and handpiece.

1832 - James Snell invents the first reclining dental chair.

1839 - Charles Goodyear invents the vulcanization process for hardening rubber. The resulting Vulcanite, an inexpensive material easily molded to the mouth, makes an excellent base for false teeth, and is soon adopted for use by dentists. In 1864 the molding process for vulcanite dentures is patented, but the dental profession fights the onerous licensing fees for the next twenty-five years.

1840 - Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris establish the world's first dental school, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, and originate the Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree. (The school merges with the University of Maryland School of Dentistry in 1923).

1846 - Dentist William Morton conducts the first successful public demonstration of the use of ether anesthesia for surgery. The previous year Horace Wells, also a dentist, had conducted a similar demonstration that was regarded as a failure when the patient cried out. Crawford Long, a physician, later claims he used ether as an anesthetic in an operation as early as 1842, but he did not publish his work.

1855 - Robert Arthur originates the cohesive gold foil method allowing dentists to insert gold into a cavity with minimal pressure. The foil is fabricated by annealing, a process of passing gold through a flame making it soft and malleable.

1864 - Sanford C. Barnum, develops the rubber dam, a simple device made of a piece of elastic rubber fitted over a tooth by means of weights, which solves the problem of isolating a tooth from the oral cavity.

1866 - Lucy Beaman Hobbs graduates from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, becoming the first woman> to earn a dental degree.

1880s - The collapsible metal tube revolutionizes toothpaste manufacturing and marketing. Dentifrice had been available only in liquid or powder form, usually made by individual dentists, and sold in bottles, porcelain pots, or paper boxes. Tube toothpaste, in contrast, is mass-produced in factories, mass-marketed, and sold nation-wide. In twenty years, it becomes the norm.

1890 - Willoughby Miller an American dentist in Germany, notes the microbial basis of dental decay in his book Micro-Organisms of the Human Mouth. This generates an unprecedented interest in oral hygiene and starts a world-wide movement to promote regular toothbrushing and flossing.

1895 - Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physicist, discovers the x-ray
.

1899 - Edward Hartley Angle classifies the various forms of malocclusion


The development of new technologies:

1903 - Charles Land devises the porcelain jacket crown.

1905 - Alfred Einhorn, a German chemist, formulates the local anesthetic procain, later marketed under the trade name Novocain.


1907 - William Taggart invents a "lost wax" casting machine, allowing dentists to make precision cast fillings.

1930-1943 - Frederick S. McKay, a Colorado dentist, is convinced that brown stains (mottling) on his patients' teeth are related to their water supply. McKay's research verifies that drinking water with high levels of naturally occurring fluoride is associated with low dental caries and a high degree of mottled enamel. By the early 1940s, H. Trendley Dean determines the ideal level of fluoride in drinking water to substantially reduce decay without mottling.

1938 - The nylon toothbrush, the first made with synthetic bristles, appears on the market.

1937 - Alvin Strock inserts the first Vitallium dental screw implant. Vitallium, the first successful biocompatible implant metal, had been developed a year earlier by Charles Venable, an orthopedic surgeon.

1950s - The first fluoride toothpastes are marketed.

1949 - Oskar Hagger, a Swiss chemist, develops the first system of bonding acrylic resin to dentin.

1955 - Michael Buonocore describes the acid etch technique, a simple method of increasing the adhesion of acrylic fillings to enamel.

1957 - John Borden introduces a high-speed air-driven contra-angle handpiece. The Airotor obtains speeds up to 300,000 rotations per minute and is an immediate commercial success, launching a new era of high-speed dentistry
.

1958 - A fully reclining dental chair is introduced.

1960s - Lasers are developed and approved for soft tissue procedures.

1960 - The first commercial electric toothbrush, developed in Switzerland

1962 - Rafael Bowen develops Bis-GMA, the thermoset resin complex used in most modern composite resin restorative materials.

1980s - Per-Ingvar Branemark describes techniques for the osseointegration of dental implants.

1989 - The first commercial home tooth bleaching product is marketed.

1990s - New tooth-colored restorative materials plus increased usage of bleaching, veneers, and implants inaugurate an era of esthetic dentistry