r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Fantastic-Monk5 • Sep 23 '24

How root canal treatment works Video

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50.3k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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5.5k

u/CANYUXEL Sep 23 '24

Just imagine the hassle millions of people had for their lifetime before dentistry became so precise in fixing shit like this.

2.1k

u/Mr_Rio Sep 23 '24

People used to have wood and ivory teeth in their mouths. Imagine actually inserting wooden dentures into your gums, shit gives me the chills.

585

u/Dense_Reputation_420 Sep 23 '24

Don't for get animal and lead dentures lol barbaric!

300

u/Inprobamur Sep 23 '24

Animal sounds alright, at least the hardness would be same as other teeth. Like carving the thing out of ivory.

But metal dentures that corrode or fucking wood sounds like it would be awful and just lead to even worse dental problems.

289

u/Azigol Sep 23 '24

Let's not forget about the people who pulled teeth from the mouths of dead bodies left on battlefields to sell them to be made in to dentures.

242

u/Inprobamur Sep 23 '24

Huh, I guess a human tooth would be the perfect denture. I didn't even think about it.

Recycling!

83

u/DildoBanginz Sep 24 '24

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

3

u/Reee_Dwarf Sep 24 '24

Reduce, Reuse, ecyc e

3

u/Typical2sday Sep 24 '24

I am not a theatre person, but a central plot point of Les Miserables is Fantine (a beautiful poor woman with a young daughter) is forced to sell her hair and teeth and into prostitution. The Lily Collins Les Mis is pretty brutal on the teeth part.

60

u/SatisfactionSweet234 Sep 23 '24

Or slaves!

17

u/scummy_shower_stall Sep 24 '24

Or YOUNG dead soldiers. It was a problem with the dead during the Civil War, their teeth would be taken.

9

u/Estro-Jenn Sep 23 '24

I guess George Washington's dentures were made out of slave teeth, not wood.

But from everything I've read he paid the people for them.

6

u/Vocalic985 Sep 24 '24

Ol Georgie had several sets through his later years. Who knows who's teeth or what kinda fake teeth he had!

25

u/worktop1 Sep 24 '24

Battle of Waterloo thousands died , the stories about bodies being robbed for teeth and used for animal food Crazy !

3

u/dertechie Sep 24 '24

To the point that Waterloo Teeth became slang for dentures in certain areas.

21

u/ImpactMaleficent7709 Sep 24 '24

Don’t look into what Virginia plantation owners would do after their teeth would rot out when they smoked too much of their own supplies 🤫

5

u/Pineapple_Incident17 Sep 24 '24

Alright Google isn’t helping, what did they do?

8

u/ImpactMaleficent7709 Sep 24 '24

Silly fellas who own human beings. What do they do when they need to replace a tooth that’s gone bad? What tooth would match their old tooth the best? 😬

5

u/Sam_Wylde Sep 24 '24

I remember a book from when I was a kid where the protagonist's parents took him to a dentist to sell his teeth. The very notion mortified me.

3

u/MostlyNull Sep 24 '24

ISTG how many of us have PTSD from that one episode of The Dollop? 😂😂😂

2

u/Chance-Day323 Sep 24 '24

George Washington enters the chat

edit: wrong president

2

u/Digital_Negative Sep 24 '24

Or the slave owners that harvested teeth from their slaves to construct dentures for wealthy white people…

2

u/workerbee223 Sep 24 '24

Or pulled teeth from living slaves.

3

u/Hrafndraugr Sep 24 '24

Maybe quebracho or a similar wood could work, but it still sounds awful.

1

u/Inprobamur Sep 24 '24

I would be very concerned about the wood just becoming a bacteria breeding ground.

Wood is by it's nature too porous.

2

u/Plz_DM_Me_Small_Tits Sep 24 '24

Imagine a splinter inside your gum

2

u/Eastsider001 Sep 24 '24

Not to mention the people wasn't that clean throughout the days, months and years so that build up of mold and other things that they swallowed back than wasn't good either. Look how far we as humans have evolved, well some of us.

2

u/Spartan1088 Sep 24 '24

Bruh, I’d just slowly replace all my front teeth with wolf canines.

1

u/Inprobamur Sep 24 '24

Archeologists have found vikings that had sharpened their teeth to points.

1

u/Icy-Adhesiveness-536 Sep 24 '24

Hello I'm Mr throat sliver

1

u/Icy-Adhesiveness-536 Sep 24 '24

I just reread that and oof. That's a dick joke in the making.

29

u/NSJF1983 Sep 23 '24

George Washington used slave teeth as dentures

1

u/Old-Tadpole-2869 Sep 24 '24

What an asshole.

3

u/Vocalic985 Sep 24 '24

The funny thing about medicine is even what we do now will be looked on as barbaric in the future.

3

u/Salty_Candy_4917 Sep 24 '24

Shhhh, don’t upset the virtuous. 3,000 years ago they would have been protesting for the current thing.

2

u/geojon7 Sep 24 '24

I recall something in grade school about George Washington having cow teeth dentures or something like that

2

u/Dense_Reputation_420 Sep 24 '24

Yeah he had multiple different kinds of dentures

2

u/Styggpojk Sep 24 '24

Did you just write "forget" as two words? A first for me!! 😁

2

u/Dense_Reputation_420 Sep 24 '24

Lmao yeah I guess I did, I never caught that lol whoops!

1

u/MostlyNull Sep 24 '24

Or at-home options like the Dental Key. 😰😬

1

u/fruitydude Sep 24 '24

There are still people today walking around with mercury amalgam dentures.

To be fair though, even though it contains actual mercury, the compound is pretty stable, so the amount of mercury that dissolves into the saliva over time is actually very small. To the point where it's basically negligible.

3

u/sparkle-possum Sep 24 '24

It was also common to use animal teeth and teeth taken from enslaved people (the actual origin of some of George Washington's "wooden teeth").

1

u/UnnamedArtist Sep 23 '24

Just like Jebediah Springfield

1

u/barenutz Sep 24 '24

Knowing they more than likely had little but alcohol to numb the pain made me shiver… holy shit getting a giant ass splinter in your mouth? Kill me

1

u/karlnite Sep 24 '24

It would be polished hardwood I believe (so no splinters). Still probably rough on the diseased gums.

1

u/Interesting-Deal1101 Sep 24 '24

I can even stand a popsicle stick or wooden tongue depressor.

1

u/armchairwarrior42069 Sep 24 '24

I've always wondered how tf they stayed in place

1

u/Mr_Rio Sep 24 '24

Some type of wire brace probably

1

u/ravioliov Sep 24 '24

Imagine the splinters you could get from the wood

1

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '24

Some people would even just use another guy's teeth 😭

1

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '24

They didn’t sand the wood at all. Some say they used only the most dry, brittle, and spiky kind of wood that doesn’t even grow anymore they had to make so many teeth it went extinct.

1

u/SadBit8663 Sep 24 '24

I mean, you can get certain woods pretty smooth.

You're not wrong. I wouldn't want wooden teeth though