Old dentists' office walls are full of thousands of "buried teeth"

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/27/poor-r-value.html

4 Likes

quark-but-why

12 Likes

Is that where I was supposed to put them all?

8 Likes

They’re historical! Plus in the future we can clone the teeth’s possessors because, um, okay, why?

7 Likes

I wonder if this is anything like the razor blade wall slots that old homes used to have.

32 Likes

What? And the razors just fell behind the wall and stayed there?

6 Likes

An overlooked method of insulation?

5 Likes

Yes. Seriously. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=223599

23 Likes

That’s… that’s amazing!

And they didn’t even bother to put some wooden studs or something there even to sort of box them in?

The mind boggles!

9 Likes

With isotope analysis, we can definitely map where the people came from. And if I understand correctly, they are all older than the first tests of atomic bombs, so this could be quite interesting, at the very least for calibration curves.

14 Likes

Yes, it very much is a real life metaphor of pushing problems into the future for others to worry about.

16 Likes

Well, the rusty old razor blades we inherited in our 60 year-old house stayed there behind the wall … until a few months ago when we had to have a plumber in to replace some leaky drain pipes behind said wall. My wife and I had to dispose of dozens (hundreds?) of jagged tetanus vectors.

“Safety” razor, my eye.

13 Likes

2708424367_242ceeb7e7

17 Likes

“The museum would be pleased to receive the teeth”

Now there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day.

15 Likes

Seems sensible to me. Everyone who enters into the practice of dentistry(endodotics is bogged down in ongoing negotiations over whether it’s merely tooth-adjacent surgery or under the jurisdiction of the unseelie court’s tooth fairies) places themselves in particular debt to the tooth fairy; and having a suitable offering on hand can protect the entire building on those unpredictable occasions when a tithe is claimed.

26 Likes

Now, are we sure it really was a dentist’s office?
This has “Tooth Fairy” written all over it.

19 Likes

The oldest place I ever lived in was a row house in Montreal built in the 1870s, in an old Irish neighbourhood (essentially a slum until the 1980s). No slots for razors but the cellar was just a rough dirt floor. The mind boggled at what might be buried under there.

3 Likes

I’m guessing there are often cavities in the teeth in the cavities?

12 Likes

Only if the tooth fairy looks like this:

9 Likes

I’ll bet that’s where they put the bad children. The teeth are all that’s left.

7 Likes