Page 452 - The Secret Museum

Woolworths started to stock them and prices went down, and then everyone could

afford one.

Toothpaste was first made out of ox hooves, myrrh, eggshells or pumice mixed
together; people just rubbed it straight onto their teeth with their finger. The Romans
used tooth powder made of hoofs, horns, crabs, eggshells or oyster shell, sometimes
mixed with honey. You would sprinkle toothpowder on to a finger, twig or brush to
clean your teeth. Then dentifrice – still the French word for toothpaste – was
invented. It came in a round block that you would scrape a toothbrush over. Usually,
dentifrice was flavourless but Queen Victoria liked hers cherry flavoured. The first

dentifrice to come in tubes was Dr Sheffield’s Cream Dentifrice. While Dr
Sheffield’s son was studying in Paris he watched artists painting with tubes of paint
and had a flash of inspiration – why not sell dentifrice in tubes?

Queen Victoria had a strange fascination for teeth. She wore the first milk tooth
that waggled free from her seven-year-old daughter’s mouth as a gold and enamel
brooch, designed into the shape of a thistle (Prince Albert had pulled the tooth out
when the family were in Scotland). She also had a pair of earrings with two teeth for
each ear and wore a necklace Albert had made for her that was made out of 44 teeth

from stags that he had shot on the Balmoral estate. She didn’t go as far as a Mayan
man, whose tooth is in storage at the museum, however. It has a jade stone inside it.
The Mayan man would have spun a copper tube, like a straw, on to his tooth, to cut a
round hole for the gem.

It’s strange to think that not so long ago, false teeth were quite a status symbol. If
you had fake ones, nothing could go wrong with them. George Washington had a set
made from hippo ivory. Washington seems like a long time ago, but it was still a
popular thing to do in recent times. When Roald Dahl sold the film rights to his first

children’s story, The Gremlins – about little creatures that caused problems with
RAF planes – to Walt Disney, he gave the RAF Benevolent Fund all the proceeds
except for $200. This he used to buy the best false teeth in America. Like many men
his age, Roald replaced all his teeth with false ones. He urged his sister, in a rude
letter – which I read in the archives of the Roald Dahl Museum – to do the same, but
she would not. I’m not surprised.

We’re really lucky dentists have got better and better at their jobs. Not so long ago
people who could afford it used to get false teeth for their 21st birthday, or just

before they got married. What a rubbish birthday present – a mouth full of false teeth.