Going right back to some of the first historical records on dentistry, in 2000 BC the people of Iraq believed that tooth decay was caused by worms. By the year 800 BC an ancient civilization from Italy were carrying out real dental treatments. These included using pieces of precious metal to hold loose teeth in place and constructing false teeth from animal and human teeth. By the time of Hippocrates, he himself was investigating and describing diseases of the mouth. In the first half of the fifteenth century the first textbook on dentistry was published although there was not much in the way of pain relief so a visit to the dentist was still a painful experience. Up until seventeenth dentistry was considered general surgery, during the seventeenth this changed and dentistry became an area of surgery by itself. [Read more...]