Braces and teeth, who invented braces?
Question:
And just out of curiosity.. (i think its amazing) how they just put a few squares on your teeth and abit of wire and you teeth go straight, how does it work? and who came up with it?
Answers:
Early History
Even ancient people wanted straight teeth! According to the AAO (American Association of Orthodontists), archaeologists have discovered mummified ancients with crude metal bands wrapped around individual teeth. To close gaps, it has been surmised that catgut did the work now done by today's orthodontic wire! Later, in 400-500 BC, Hippocrates and Aristotle both ruminated about ways to straighten teeth and fix various dental conditions. Straight teeth have been on our minds a very long time!
While Greece was in its Golden Age, the Etruscans (the precursors of the Romans) were burying their dead with appliances that were used to maintain space and prevent collapse of the dentition during life. Then in a Roman tomb in Egypt, a researcher found a number of teeth bound with a gold wire -- the first documented ligature wire! At the time of Christ, Aurelius Cornelius Celsus first recorded the treatment of teeth by finger pressure. Despite all this evidence and experimentation, no significant events in orthodontics really occurred until the much later, in around the 1700s (although dentistry as a whole made great advancements in the interim). It should be noted that in Medieval times, specialized barbers often performed dental "operations", extractions, and procedures such as blood-letting. Let's be glad we live in the 21st Century!
Important Breakthroughs
Even before George Washington wore his famous wooden teeth, dentists were thinking about ways to correct bad bites. In 1728, French Dentist Pierre Fauchard published a book called the "The Surgeon Dentist" with an entire chapter on ways to straighten teeth. Fauchard used a device called a "Bandeau," a horseshoe-shaped piece of precious metal which helped expand the arch. French Dentist Ettienne Bourdet followed Fauchard in 1757 with his book "The Dentist's Art", also devoting a chapter to tooth alignment and appliances. Bourdet was the dentist to the King of France. He further perfected the Bandeau, and is also the first dentist (on record) who recommended extraction of premolars to alleviate crowding. He was also the first to scientifically prove jaw growth. Here's a link to a series of pages with some fascinating illustrations of early expansion devices.
Scottish surgeon John Hunter wrote (among other surgical books) "The Natural History of the Human Teeth" in 1771, clearly describing dental anatomy. Hunter coined the terms bicuspids, cuspids, incisors and molars. His second book, "A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Teeth", described dental pathology. Although teeth straightening and extraction to improve alignment of remaining teeth has been practiced since early times, orthodontics as a science of its own did not really exist until the mid-1800s.
In 1819 Delabarre introduced the wire crib, which marked the birth of contemporary orthodontics. The term orthodontia was coined by Joachim Lafoulon in 1841. Gum elastics were first employed by Maynard in 1843. Tucker was the first to cut rubber bands from rubber tubing in 1850. And in the late 1800s, Eugene Solomon Talbot was the first person to use X-rays for orthodontic diagnosis. But all this was nothing compared to advances in orthodontics in the 20th Century.
no it doesnt hurt.
The first "braces" were constructed by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. Fauchard's "braces" consisted of a flat strip of metal, which was connected to teeth by pieces of thread.
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