WEBVTT - What's the History of Toothpaste? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.120 Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff, 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:11.640 Lauren Vogelbaum. Here without teeth, life is tough. Sure we 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:14.480 have all sorts of fancy dentistry tricks these days, but 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.960 nothing tops the Choppers were born with. In fact, when 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:20.759 rocker Patti Smith gave the commencement address at the Pratt 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:24.680 Institute in New York, she gave those graduating seniors some 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.600 incredibly sound advice. She said, now that I'm here, my 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:31.240 greatest urge is to speak to you of dental care. 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.440 My generation had a rough go dentally. Our dentists were 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:36.800 the army dentists who came back from World War Two 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:39.240 and believed that the dental office was a battle ground. 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:43.320 You have a better chance at dental health. And it 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.520 may be true that our big dental procedures are considerably 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:48.920 better than they were in the middle of the last century. 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:51.880 But it's the maintenance that Smith was probably talking about. 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.600 We've got to scrub our teeth each and every day, 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.240 or else bacteria will calcify into tartar, which is where 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.560 the tooth troubles really begin. Keeping all your teeth in 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.240 your head and avoiding life threatening infection has always required 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:10.360 constant vigilance, which is where toothpaste comes in. Now, nobody 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.080 knows who invented the toothbrush. Most ancient civilizations seem to 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:16.840 have had some variation of a frayed choo stick that 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.040 they used to keep their teeth clean. But don't teeth 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.520 also need some sort of well cleaning agent. Is that 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:26.800 minty plaster like goo that we smear on our modern 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:30.800 chewing sticks just capitalist snake oil? Not of history has 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.440 anything to say about it. Toothpaste might actually predate the 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.960 tooth brush. While there's evidence that ancient Egyptians were using 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:40.880 toothbrushes as far back as three thousand, five hundred BC, 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.479 recipes for tooth powder have been found the date back 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:49.200 to five thousand BC. The earliest Egyptian toothpowder recipe contained 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:52.520 plenty of abrasives to scrape off all the sticky residue. 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.720 The ashes of burnt eggshells and oxen hoofs mixed with 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.600 pumice seemed to be popular. By the fourth century, Egyptians 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.240 had set up their tooth powder with abrasives like rock 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:05.800 salt and flavorings like mint and peppercorns. They even added 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.560 dried iris flour, perhaps because it was associated with purification. 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:12.960 Good thing are tooth enamel is harder than bone or 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.239 even iron or steel. If it wasn't, those Egyptians would 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.839 have brushed their teeth right down to nubs. But when 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.079 this recipe was revealed in two thousand three at a 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:24.720 dental conference in Vienna, Austrian dentist Tynes Newman told the 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:27.440 Telegraph that he tried it and it wasn't half bad. 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.760 He said, I found that it was not unpleasant. It 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.120 was painful on my gums and made them bleed as well, 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:35.560 but that's not a bad thing, and afterwards my mouth 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.359 felt fresh and clean. I believe that this recipe would 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:40.280 have been a big improvement on some of the soap 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:44.760 toothpastes used much later around the world. Different cultures continued 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.200 mixing crushed abrasives like oyster shell or bone and nice 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.040 tasting herbs like mint and jin sing together to clean 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.920 teeth and keep platosis that's bad breath at bay. But 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.519 as with literally everything else, the Middle Ages didn't really 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:02.840 do much for toothpaste technology. During this time, Europeans settled 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.960 on a mixture of honey, salt, and dry flour, which 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.520 they supplemented by giving their teeth a good scrubbing with 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.040 the bark of certain trees. It wasn't until the nineteenth 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.800 century that the toothpaste biz as we know it really 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.160 started heating up. Recipes for tooth powders and pastes that 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.880 included abrasives like charcoal, chalk, and burned bread crumbs, as 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.079 well as incense like dragon's blood, were popular in England 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:29.720 until eighteen fifty when Coalgate introduced its first crem dentifriese, 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:32.920 which came in a jar. Mass production of this product 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:35.840 started in the eighteen seventies and twenty years later they 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:39.840 introduced the collapsible tube and from then on toothpaste was 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.360 a thing. Before World War Two, most toothpastes on the 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.680 market were sold in a lead tube. They also contained soap, 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:51.240 which was unnecessary and in some cases even counterproductive, but 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:53.840 we humans seem to have a hang up about wanting 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:58.480 our cleansers to foam. Toothpastes today still tend to contain soap, 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.040 namely sodium laurel sulf fight because it's not clean unless 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.240 it's foamy, but soap also helped maintain an even creamy texture. 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.280 We can also get this smooth texture with humicants like 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:13.400 sorbitol glycerin and propylene glycol, which have the added bonus 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.799 of being a little bit sweet. Fluoride was first added 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.600 to toothpaste in nineteen fourteen, but it wasn't until the 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.599 nineteen sixties that it was proven to fight cavities, and 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.120 modern toothpaste no longer uses chalk as an abrasive. We 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.400 most often use hydrated silica, which is exactly the same 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:31.720 stuff you find in those little packets in your vitamin 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.280 bottles and shoe boxes. So that's the story of toothpaste. 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:43.279 I'm gonna go brush my teeth. Today's episode was written 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.080 by Jescelin Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. For more 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:48.599 on this and lots of other minty fresh topics, visit 0:04:48.640 --> 0:05:02.120 our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.