I’ve read a couple accounts of medieval dental health and saw one video. From what I gathered, most mouths were loaded with unbelievable amounts of tartar. Several teeth could be engulfed, and running under the tongue. It was weird to see the skeletal heads, mouths full of rock hard spackle covering both upper and lower teeth. I don’t imagine absent flossing and regular cleaning that their mouths weren’t always in pain.
We seem to be the only species that can outlive the usefulness of our teeth, even in the worst of times or conditions.
My general point was that in the past not everyone had bad teeth, even if people did not have dentists. It’s clear people had some sort of care for their teeth, and that the look we tend to value today (all white, straight chompers) were not what people cared about. And people might have lived with more pain, but they also had means of extracting teeth going way on back.
And to be fair, even today, some people go to the dentist on the regular (for cleanings) and end up with problematic teeth, while others don’t go,and have teeth that are fine, which probably correlates to having fluoridated water and maybe good genes with regards to teeth.
I’m glad I had mine fixed, because they were pretty horrific looking. Every picture I was in I looked like I was pulling a face, but that was just my overbite.
Oh yeah, and I had 34 teeth before I had the six count 'em six wisdom teeth pulled. And those teeth were coming in at all sorts of weird angles.
When she was only 9 or 10 years old, Marie Antoinette was rejected by the French royal family as a future match, in part because of her F@#ked Up Grill. The French sent over an oral surgeon to pull some teeth and straighten out the trainwreck. So, there were some expectations of straight white teeth. “…When the archduchess smiled, the representatives of the Bourbon court gave a collective intake of horrified breath at the sight of her crooked, far-from-perfect teeth. Still, the families were not about to let such a trifling matter stand in the way of the marriage. In 1768, society dentist Pierre Laveran was summoned to Vienna.” Link to the whole shebang
Also, poets have continually complimented their inamoratas’ teeth by comparing them to ‘strings of pearls’, and that analogy spreads across a lot of cultures.
Varied space-time locales, sub-cultures, and nonconformists have faced cameras in various ways. For many subjects in past fourscores, it was serious business best faced seriously. Other targets saw it as a lark, or a job. And toggers, regarded as hackers are now, had their own ideas and kinks.
The world of prior centuries ago was not like now. Photos of funeral and death scenes were common in USA and UK. Sis or Gramps or Baby kicks off – dress-em up nice, everyone look solemn, and SNAP! The deceased might be positioned in a nice domestic scene, but probably not smiling.
I read that dogs see smiling teeth as a threat move. Shut your mouth.
