I’m going to be starting a new “Stranger Than Fiction” Series, of the amazing, sometimes accurate and sometimes outlandish advice give by various writers and doctors of the Regency and early Victorian periods (generally from 1800 to 1840ish).

Today, I’m talking about teeth. Our methods today of cleaning the teeth are fairly high-tech, but I also know people of this period tried to maintain clean teeth too. How did they do it? What advice did they get? How different were their methods of tooth hygiene than ours are today?

This is from The Family Oracle of Health: Economy, Medicine, and Good Living, from 1824:

Best Method of Cleaning the Teeth
More teeth are destroyed by ignorant and improper cleaning than by all the other causes of toothache tartar and rotting put together. All the authorities insist upon cleanliness being the best preservative but you will find little said about the evils of tooth picks tooth brushes and dentifrices which ruin the teeth of almost every body who uses them. Savages are well known to have almost uniformly fine teeth and it is equally well known that they have no absurd tooth apparatus for their toilette.

So this author seems to believe that no toothbrush is better than the ones that were in common use at the time…However, the ones in use at the time appear fairly similar to the ones we have today (made of metal rather than plastic, with bristles that were generally made of horsehair)…

This is Napoleon Bonaparte’s Toothbrush! It boasts a silver gilt handle and horsehair bristles.

A Recipe for a tooth cleaner from the 1824 Family Oracle:

Wash for Strengthening the Teeth and Gums
Take the juice of half a lemon
a spoonful of very rough claret or port wine
ten grains of sulphate of quinine
a few drops of eau de Cologne or oil of bergamot
and keep in a well stopped phial for use

A toothbrush set from Birmingham, England, circa 1793. This traveling set contains a silver toothbrush, tooth powder, and a tongue scraper (which are still in use, by the way–my dentist gave me a few a couple of visits ago!).

More about the history of tooth hygiene:
Jane Austen’s World

Next time, I’ll be talking about advice on how to stay healthy in the autumn months. Good stuff…but is it applicable today? 😮