I haven't blogged for a while - for a good reason: I've been busy trying to finish off my new book. Nearly there !
I have been casting my net wide, and working on the modern era - looking at 20th and even the 21st century. While doing so, I came across some remarkable research that surprised me - and got me thinking.
I was looking at the incidence of battlefield evacuations for the US military, and at the financial costs involved in an attempt to better understand the expenditure of western involvement in Iraq since 2003. I had not expected to learn the cause of 10% of all modern battlefield evacuations: dental emergencies. In Iraq, the cost of dental disease worked at just over $20m per year.
It turns out that research into the impact of dental health - categorised by the Department of Defense Dental Classification into System into forty seven different categories - is a major focus of the US military at the moment. Intensive work is going into R&D to find ways to reduce the impact of chronic gum disease and oral hygiene. You can download the report by clicking here.
I have been casting my net wide, and working on the modern era - looking at 20th and even the 21st century. While doing so, I came across some remarkable research that surprised me - and got me thinking.
I was looking at the incidence of battlefield evacuations for the US military, and at the financial costs involved in an attempt to better understand the expenditure of western involvement in Iraq since 2003. I had not expected to learn the cause of 10% of all modern battlefield evacuations: dental emergencies. In Iraq, the cost of dental disease worked at just over $20m per year.
It turns out that research into the impact of dental health - categorised by the Department of Defense Dental Classification into System into forty seven different categories - is a major focus of the US military at the moment. Intensive work is going into R&D to find ways to reduce the impact of chronic gum disease and oral hygiene. You can download the report by clicking here.
Areas of investigation like these are usually overlooked by medieval historians, who tend to remain in a comfortable world of monks and monasteries, chroniclers and Crusaders, only occasionally disturbed by archaeological finds - let alone modern research. In fact, looking at how we now better understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) can be very helpful when trying to evaluate the effects of events like - well, the First Crusade - whose participants experienced immense stress and trauma before returning home to 'normal' life. Perhaps this was why one survivor who had lost his arm trying to storm the ramparts of Jerusalem in 1099 found it so hard to adapt to reality, castrating a man after falling into an argument with him - despite his own injury.
Anyway, the upshot is that I've been looking at teeth and dentists in the Middle Ages and in Byzantium - not something that would have crossed my mind beforehand. I've been looking at how a good set of teeth were idealised - like Michael Psellos, who wrote of those of his daughter being 'white as snow, shimmering like crystals in their pearliness', or one member of the imperial family in Constantinople who lost teeth regularly despite cleaning them diligently - but was particularly when it came to choosing suitable replacements to hide the gaps (he fond that a certain type of resin worked well).
My wanderings have taken me across 11th century guidebooks on women's cosmetics, which include advice on how to whiten teeth (make a marble paste; have a good glass of wine; then chew parsley) to Hildegard of Bingen explaining the best kind to keep the mouth fresh.
Anyway, the upshot is that I've been looking at teeth and dentists in the Middle Ages and in Byzantium - not something that would have crossed my mind beforehand. I've been looking at how a good set of teeth were idealised - like Michael Psellos, who wrote of those of his daughter being 'white as snow, shimmering like crystals in their pearliness', or one member of the imperial family in Constantinople who lost teeth regularly despite cleaning them diligently - but was particularly when it came to choosing suitable replacements to hide the gaps (he fond that a certain type of resin worked well).
My wanderings have taken me across 11th century guidebooks on women's cosmetics, which include advice on how to whiten teeth (make a marble paste; have a good glass of wine; then chew parsley) to Hildegard of Bingen explaining the best kind to keep the mouth fresh.
That has got to hurt... I've yet to find much about knights suffering from toothache so badly that they had to leave the battlefield - but then again, I've only just started looking for that. But in a nice echo to show how our ancestors were just as keen as the US military to improve dental hygiene and to understand it, I've been reading a treatise in the late 14th century called the Philonium by Valesco - who became physician royal to the King of France.
Like the US dentists, Valesco recognized that there were many different kinds of disease affecting the gums and the teeth - thirteen in his reckoning. It was essential, he wrote, to come up with good and proper way to stop tooth decay - and not the crackpot remedies that seem to be offered on every street corner.
As my own dentist would tell me today, keeping the gums healthy and the teeth clean is important. It's a message that has been given loud and clear for centuries - as I'll tell him next time I see him.
I'll stay quiet, though, about the poem by the medieval Greek poem by Theodore Prodromos in case that annoys him.
Like the US dentists, Valesco recognized that there were many different kinds of disease affecting the gums and the teeth - thirteen in his reckoning. It was essential, he wrote, to come up with good and proper way to stop tooth decay - and not the crackpot remedies that seem to be offered on every street corner.
As my own dentist would tell me today, keeping the gums healthy and the teeth clean is important. It's a message that has been given loud and clear for centuries - as I'll tell him next time I see him.
I'll stay quiet, though, about the poem by the medieval Greek poem by Theodore Prodromos in case that annoys him.
Seriously? Prodromos' dentist approahed him with a tool big enough to extract an elephant tusk, only to injure him - and break the tooth in the process. Unlike most dentists, mine has a fine sense of humour. But I'm not going to risk it.
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