page_title: Toothache
section_title: History, society and culture
hierarchical_section_title: Toothache / History, society and culture
context_page_description: Toothache, also known as dental pain, is pain in the teeth or their supporting structures, caused by dental diseases or pain referred to the teeth by non-dental diseases. When severe it may impact sleep, eating, and other daily activities.
  Common causes include inflammation of the pulp, usually in response to tooth decay, dental trauma, or other factors, dentin hypersensitivity, apical periodontitis, dental abscesses
context_section_description: The first known mention of tooth decay and toothache occurs on a Sumerian clay tablet now referred to as the "Legend of the worm". It was written in cuneiform, recovered from the Euphrates valley, and dates from around 5000 BC. The belief that tooth decay and dental pain is caused by tooth worms is found in ancient India, Egypt, Japan, and China, and persists until the Age of Enlightenment.  Although toothache is an ancient problem, it is thought that ancient people suffered less dental decay due to a lack of refined sugars in their diet. On the other hand, diets were frequently coarser, leading to more tooth wear. For example, hypotheses hold that ancient Egyptians had a lot of tooth wear due to desert sand blown on the wind mixing with the dough of their bread. The ancient Egyptians also wore amulets to prevent toothache. The Ebers papyrus (1500 BC) details a recipe to treat "gnawing of the blood in the tooth", which included fruit of the gebu plant, onion, cake, and dough, to be chewed for four days.
  Archigenes of Apamea describes use of a mouthwash made by boiling gallnuts and hallicacabum in vinegar, and a mixture of roasted earthworms, spikenard ointment, and crushed spider eggs. Pliny advises toothache sufferers to ask a frog to take away the pain by moonlight. Claudius' physician Scribonius Largus recommends "fumigations made with the seeds of the hyoscyamus scattered on burning charcoal  ... followed by rinsings of the mouth with hot water, in this way  ... small worms are expelled."
  In Christianity, Saint Apollonia is the patron saint of toothache and other dental problems. She was an early Christian martyr who was persecuted for her beliefs in Alexandria during the Imperial Roman age. A mob struck her repeatedly in the face until all her teeth were smashed. She was threatened with being burned alive unless she renounced Christianity, but she instead chose to throw herself onto the fire. Supposedly, toothache sufferers who invoke her name will find relief.
  In the 15th century, priest-physician Andrew Boorde describes a "deworming technique" for the teeth: "And if it [toothache] do come by worms, make a candle of wax with Henbane seeds and light it and let the perfume of the candle enter into the tooth and gape over a dish of cold water and then you may take the worms out of the water and kill them on your nail."
  Albucasis (Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi) used cautery for toothache, inserting a red-hot needle into the pulp of the tooth. The medieval surgeon Guy de Chauliac used a camphor, sulfur, myrrh, and asafetida mixture to fill teeth and cure toothworm and toothache. French anatomist Ambroise Paré recommended: "Toothache is, of all others, the most atrocious pain that can torment a man, being followed by death. Erosion (i.e. dental decay) is the effect of an acute and acrid humour. To combat this, one must recourse to cauterization  ... by means of cauterization  ... one burns the nerve, thus rendering it incapable of again feeling or causing pain."
  In the Elizabethan era, toothache was an ailment associated with lovers, as in Massinger and Fletcher's play The False One. Toothache also appears in a number of William Shakespeare's plays, such as Othello and Cymbeline. In Much Ado About Nothing, Act III scene 2, when asked by his companions why he is feeling sad, a character replies that he has toothache so as not to admit the truth that he is in love. There is reference to "toothworm" as the cause of toothache and to tooth extraction as a cure ("draw it"). In Act V, scene 1, another character remarks: "For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently." In modern parlance, this translates to the observation that philosophers are still human and feel pain, even though they claim they have transcended human suffering and misfortune. In effect, the character is rebuking his friend for trying to make him feel better with philosophical platitudes.
  The Scottish poet, Robert Burns wrote "Address to the Toothache" in 1786, inspired after he suffered from it. The poem elaborat
caption: A monk with a toothache examines himself in a mirror, painting by Carl Bloch from 1875.[53]
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4134", "Image ImageLength": "4720", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "Carl Bloch, En munk, der spejler sig, 1875", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 5D Mark II", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:30 15:17:19", "Image Artist": "Nivaagaards Malerisamling", "Image Rating": "0", "Image Tag 0x4749": "0", "Image Copyright": "Public Domain https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/", "Image ExifOffset": "2610", "Image XPTitle": "[67, 0, 97, 0, 114, 0, 108, 0, 32, 0, 66, 0, 108, 0, 111, 0, 99, 0, 104, 0, ... ]", "Image XPComment": "[79, 0, 108, 0, 105, 0, 101, 0, 32, 0, 112, 0, 229, 0, 32, 0, 116, 0, 114, 0, ... ]", "Image XPAuthor": "Nivaagaards Malerisamling", "Image CameraOwnerName": "Torben Christensen", "Image BodySerialNumber": "330117781", "Image LensSpecification": "[100, 100, 0/0, 0/0]", "Image LensModel": "EF100mm f/2 USM", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/2", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:03:28 10:41:44", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:03:28 10:41:44", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "100", "EXIF SubSecTime": "93", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "93", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "93", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4134", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4720", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5616000/1459", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1872000/479", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Bracket", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}