HEALTH AND MEDICINE
How did people clean their teeth before toothbrushes?
Ancient Egyptian tombs dating back to 3000 BC have yielded sticks frayed at the end to floss teeth, and the miswak (chew-stick) has been used in Muslim cultures for centuries. The first bristle brushes appeared in China at the end of the 15th century, but Europe was slow to catch on. Medieval courtiers were urged not to pick their teeth with their knives, but at least most of them were only picking out bits of meat or vegetables. By Tudor times, black teeth were a sign that you could afford sugar – a situation that became more common with the industrial production of sugar from the late 18th century. Legend has it that William Addis came up with the idea of setting boar bristles into bits of cattle bone in the 1780s, while staring at a broom in his Newgate prison cell. The design was refined in 1844 with a three-row version.
Toothbrush technology took a great leap forward in 1938 when DuPont introduced the first nylon bristles. Surprisingly, a patent for the world’s first electric toothbrush, the Motodent, had been filed the previous year.
When were prosthetic limbs first introduced?
A 3,000-year-old wood-and-leather toe found on an ancient Egyptian mummy, and the discovery in Italy of an artificial leg dating back to 300 BC, demonstrate that the concept of prosthetic limbs has ancient origins.
In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of a diviner serving the Persians who replaced his lost foot with a wooden version.
Some 500 years later, Pliny the Elder provides the earliest record of a prosthetic hand. This account mentions a Roman general named Marcus Sergius, who lost a hand – and replaced it with an artificial one.
Prosthetics have clearly been of value to many people throughout history, especially to those injured in battle. The prevalence of warfare over the
