{"id":1429,"date":"2023-06-14T20:40:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-14T20:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/dental-care-blog\/medieval-englands-bad-breath-solutions\/"},"modified":"2023-06-14T20:40:03","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T20:40:03","slug":"medieval-englands-bad-breath-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/dental-care-blog\/medieval-englands-bad-breath-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Medieval England\u2019s Bad Breath Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

BACK IN MEDIEVAL<\/b> times in England (and in most other places, to be fair), people didn\u2019t have a great understanding of what caused cavities or gum disease, but they still cared about having fresh breath. It wasn\u2019t just out of politeness \u2014 they believed that bad smells could carry disease on their own, including bad breath.<\/p>\n

Medieval Breath Fresheners<\/h3>\n

So what was their smell-based dental care? They chewed spices, which we can see an example of in the Canterbury Tales where Chaucer\u2019s characters stay fresh by chewing licorice and cardamom. We also know that women were sometimes recommended a mixture of aniseed, fennel, and cumin to chew.<\/p>\n

Cracking a Tooth on Your Bread<\/h3>\n

Some of the modern causes of dental problems didn\u2019t apply back then. Cavities wouldn\u2019t start to become common until the sugar trade reached England in the 1400s. However, grinding flour between millstones tended to leave tiny chips of stone in their bread. It was pretty easy to crack a tooth on that, and it was a big reason many adults lost several teeth in their lifetimes.<\/p>\n

Strange \u201cCures\u201d for Toothaches<\/h3>\n

Aside from combating bad breath, they also tried to treat toothaches. The rich could afford myrrh and opium, but everyone else had to make do with dubious remedies like burning a mutton fat and sea holly seed candle near their mouths, which was supposed to lure out the \u201cworms\u201d hiding inside the teeth. (We now know that what they thought were worms were just the roots of teeth!)<\/p>\n

When it comes to dental health, isn\u2019t it nice living in modern times?<\/h4>\n

Top image used under CC0 Public Domain license<\/a><\/span>. Image cropped and modified from original.<\/h6>\n
The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BACK IN MEDIEVAL<\/b> times in England (and in most other places, to be fair), people didn\u2019t have a great understanding of what caused cavities…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[176,273,280,274,279,275],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[399,922,1154,544,545,101,350,546,548,37,47,477,336,550,596,46,115,666,554],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-dental-posts","category-endo","category-general-dental","category-ortho","category-pediatric","category-176","category-273","category-280","category-274","category-279","category-275","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/hudsonhighlandsdentistry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}