Читать книгу Biological Mechanisms of Tooth Movement - Группа авторов - Страница 18

Archeological evidence from all continents and many countries, including written documents, reveal that our forefathers were aware of the presence of teeth in the mouth, and of various associated health problems. These early Earth dwellers confronted diseases like caries and periodontitis with a variety of medications, ranging from prayers to extractions, and fabrication of dentifrice pastes. Gold inlays and incisor decorations were discovered in South America, and gold crowns and bridges, still attached to the teeth, were discovered in pre‐Roman era Etruscan graves (Weinberger, 1926). All these findings bear witness to the awareness of our ancestors to oral health issues.

Recognition of malocclusions and individual variability in facial morphology and function were first noted in Ancient Greece. Hippocrates of Cos (460–377 BCE), who is the founder of Greek medicine, instituted for the first time a careful, systematic, and thorough examination of the patient. His writings are the first known literature pertaining to the teeth. He discussed the timing of shedding of primary teeth and stated that “teeth that come forth after these grow old with the person, unless disease destroys them.” He also commented that the teeth are important in processing nutrition, and the production of sound. Hippocrates, like other well‐educated people of his time, was keenly aware of the variability in the shapes of the human craniofacial complex. He stated that “among those individuals whose heads are long‐shaped, some have thick necks, strong limbs and bones; others have highly arched palates, their teeth are disposed irregularly, crowding one on the other, and they are afflicted by headaches and otorrhea” (Weinberger, 1926). This statement is apparently the first written description of a human malocclusion. Interestingly, Hippocrates saw here a direct connection between the malocclusion and other craniofacial pathologies.

A prominent Roman physician, Celsus (25 BCE–50 CE; Figure 1.3), was apparently the first to recommend the use of mechanical force to evoke tooth movement. In his Book VII, Chapter XII entitled “Operations requisite in the mouth,” he wrote: “If a permanent tooth happens to grow in children before the deciduous one has fallen out, that which should have dropped must be scrapped round and pulled out; that which is growing in place of former must be pushed into its proper place with the finger every day, till it comes to its own size.” Celsus was also the first to recommend the use of a file in the mouth, mainly for the treatment of carious teeth (Weinberger, 1926). Another Roman dentist, Plinius Secundus (23–79), expressed opposition to the extraction of teeth for the correction of malocclusions, and advocated filing elongated teeth “to bring them into proper alignment.” Plinius was evidently the first to recommend using files to address the vertical dimension of malocclusion, and this method had been widely used until the nineteenth century (Weinberger, 1926).

Figure 1.3 Aulus Cornelius Celsus (25 BCE–50 CE).

(Picture courtesy: http://www.general‐anaesthesia.com/.)

There were few, if any, known advances in the fields of medicine, dentistry, and orthodontics from the first to the eighteenth centuries, with the exception of Galen (131–201), who established experimental medicine, and defined anatomy as the basis of medicine. He devoted chapters to teeth, and, like Celsus, a century earlier, advocated the use of finger pressure to align malposed teeth. Galen advocated the same method to that of Celsus through his writings in 180 CE, which stated that a tooth that projects beyond its neighbors should be filed off to reduce the irregularity (Caster, 1934). Another exception was Vesalius (1514–1564), whose dissections produced the first illustrated and precise book on human anatomy.

For reasons connected with the church, Galen and his writings monopolized medicine for more than a thousand years. However, there were minor advancements in European medicine during that protracted era and advancements evidenced by writings of Muslim physicians from Arabia, Spain, Egypt, and Persia.