User:Chipsnsalsalover/Pierre Fauchard

Legacy
Fauchard was featured on a stamp in France to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his death in 1961.

Fauchard converted dentistry from a craft to a science (118). More specifically, he claimed that a dentist “should rise above the level of empiricism and quackery.” He believed that a dentist “should spend more time preserving and conserving people’s teeth rather than pulling them out.” He placed emphasis on teething in babies, a major cause of infant mortality. People who drew teeth used pelicans to draw teeth. These pelicans would often pull healthy teeth along diseased ones, and would sometimes even take out part of the jaw too (119). Surgeons were distancing themselves from dentistry at the time, to try to distance themselves from the teeth pullers. Hence, Fauchard was unusual of this time period to be a surgeon that actually looked into teeth (124).

Prior to Fauchard's book, certified people working with teeth were called tooth experts (expert pour les dents), a term approved by the Paris Medical Faculty in 1699.

Fauchard's book describes five kinds of obturators. He advocated an obturator-bulb fixed to a denture base. He also got rid of the use of sponges. He used atmospheric pressure, adhesion, and the peripheral seal to retain upper dentures.

Quote: "The most famous surgeons having abandoned this part of the art, or at least having paid little attention to it, have caused by this negligence, the rise of people who without theory or experience, have degraded it, and practiced haphazard, without principles or method."

Literature on dentistry before Fauchard was generally found in treatises on surgery. People before Fauchard's time did not want to reveal how they worked on teeth. Subjects in his work: Dental Education, Dental Anatomy, Caries, Pathology, Materia Medica and Therapeutics, Orthodontics, Surgery, Replanting and Transplanting, Reflex Nervous Diseases related to mouth diseases, Pyorrhea, Hemorrhages and Styptics, Operative and Prosthetic Dentistry. His book described the symptoms of 103 mouth diseases, along how to treat them. He was designated as Maitre Chirurgien-Dentiste, or master in dental surgery, in his burial record. Dental laws were established in the Edict of 1699. Fauchard brought these laws to the attention of many in the preface of his book. In Venice, there was a desire expressed that there should be a school dedicated to dentistry.

Fauchard said that dentrifices containing brick, porcelain, pumic stone, calcined talc, calcined aluminum do more harm than good. The juice of sorrel, lemon juice, spirits of vitriol and of salt destroy the enamel. He stated that the primary way one should keep their teeth clean is by washing their mouth every morning with water and rubbing the teeth with a wet sponge. A solution of 3/4 ethanol and 1/4 water would also suffice. He said that a dentriifice should only be used if the aforementioned method was not enough. The dentrifice Fauchard recommends is a mixture of coral, dragon's blood, burnt honey, seed pearls, cuttle fish bone, crayfish eyes, bol d'armerie, terre sigillee, terre hematite, canelle, calcined alum, completely reduced to a fine powder and mixed together. Fauchard stated that toothbrushes ought to use sponge instead of cloth or linen because sponges are not too rough on the teeth.