Yang Guifei, one of the four most beautiful women in China, is also a toothache patient. "A little cold in spring makes me sad, and Haitang blooms alone." There was no announcement from the chef on New Year's Eve, and no king asked for litchi. Whenever there is a toothache, Yang Yuhuan is always sad. The exquisite food served by the housekeeper has no appetite, and even the favorite litchi is not interested. Later, I ate fish containing jade to cure my toothache. This is the allusion of "containing jade to produce body fluid".
Dental chart of imperial concubine's disease
Besides Yang Guifei, Bai Juyi, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, was also troubled by toothache. Bai Juyi wrote in "Giving Wine to My Neighbor in Illness": "I had a headache and toothache for three days, and my wife saw the decoction, and the maid helped me." At present, schools are on the rise. Ask the neighbors if they have any wine first. This poem is written in good faith, and a feeling of powerlessness with headache and toothache comes to my face. I have been lying in bed with a headache and toothache for three days, and I can't stand up. Finally, I had no choice but to let my wife decoct the medicine, let the maid help him up, and reluctantly asked my neighbor if there was any wine at home. Maybe if I get drunk, I can forget this annoying pain for a while. Although this tooth is very painful when it is sick, it can still chew and eat meat at ordinary times, but it is desperate when it falls out. In his later years, Bai Juyi wrote with this kind of melancholy that he was really old, his hair fell out, his teeth fell out, and he felt that he was afraid that his life would soon be over.
How the ancients cared for their teeth was very important to their aesthetics, and the toothache was unbearable. So how did the ancients maintain their teeth in order to keep them white and beautiful?
Rinse your mouth. As early as the Zhou Dynasty, the ancients began to pay attention to cleaning oral hygiene. The Book of Rites records that "when a chicken crows at first, it is salty and gargles", which means that when a chicken crows at first, people get up and wash their faces and gargle.
Chao in Sui Dynasty advocated gargling after meals in Etiology, while Zhang Gao in Song Dynasty believed that gargling in the morning was not as effective as gargling at night. "The world is often upside down. If you don't rinse your mouth early, you will remove the deposits between your teeth and your teeth will be strong.
The ancients often gargled with salt water or strong tea. In Tang Dynasty, Sun Simiao talked about gargling with warm salt water to treat toothache. In the Song Dynasty, Su Shi recorded the words of gargling with strong tea in Qiu Chi Notes: "After every meal, I was bored, and my spleen and stomach didn't know that meat would shrink between my teeth, so I didn't bother to dig holes, but my teeth met."
Pick your teeth. "Don't bite your teeth" is also advised in the Book of Rites, which means that guests should not add salt to the soup when eating at the host's house (dislike the host's bad food) and don't pick their teeth. This sentence shows that the ancients may have used toothpicks to pick their teeth as early as the Zhou Dynasty.
With the archaeological excavation, we also found Gao Rong's tomb during the Wu Dong period of the Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, including a golden dragon-shaped object with ear-digging spoons and poplar branches at both ends. Poplar branches are the tails of dragons, with round and sharp ends. Researchers believe that this is an oral cleaning tool used by the tomb owner to remove food residues between his teeth before his death. This poplar branch may be the toothpick at that time.
Cao Cao, a lean man in the Three Kingdoms period, kept his oral hygiene by picking his teeth. When Lu Shilong, a native of the Western Jin Dynasty, was in Yecheng, he saw the relics of Cao Cao before his death. In his letter to his younger brother, A Letter with My Brother in the Plain, he wrote that Cao Cao's relics included a bed, a mat, a quilt, a hat, a fan, and "tooth fibers", and he also took one from Cao Gong's Relics for his younger brother. It can be seen that picking teeth with toothpicks was a very common phenomenon in Wei and Jin Dynasties.
Toothpicks and ear scoops of the ancients
Brush your teeth. Ancient people used to call brushing teeth "brushing teeth" to keep the mouth clean, which became popular in the Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, Wang Tao recorded the method of wiping teeth in the Secret of Outer Taiwan. Biting one end of a poplar branch every morning is soft, and brushing your teeth with medicine can make your teeth fragrant and smooth.
What if Xiao Yang doesn't have a branch? Use your hands directly! There is a painting in Dunhuang frescoes, "The Holy Picture of Old Du Forks Fighting", in which a man and Zheng Shang are squatting on the ground, holding a water bottle in his left hand and the middle finger in his right hand, wiping his front teeth, and a servant next to him hands him a towel.
Old du cha dou sheng tu
With the progress of the times, toothbrushes like ours appeared in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Several toothbrushes, about 13 cm long, were unearthed in the Tang and Song ruins of Chengdu Command Street. There were double rows of holes in the brush head and a flat cone on the handle. Archaeologists also found two beautifully made toothbrushes with bone handles in the Mawei Tomb in King Xu, Liao Dynasty. The toothbrush head has eight implant holes, similar to the twelve implant holes in two rows of modern toothbrushes.
In addition to unearthed cultural relics, there are also records of brushing teeth in the literature of the Song Dynasty. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Wu recorded a toothbrush shop "Jinxiangtong" in Liang Lumeng, and the book also mentioned that there were items such as "brushing teeth" and "brushing teeth" on the hawker's burden.
The ancients used to brush their teeth.
During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the ancients used drugs to brush their teeth, similar to the toothpaste we use today. Zhou Shouzhong wrote a health-preserving book "Health-preserving Category Compilation" in the Song Dynasty, which also recorded the information of making toothbrushes with ponytails. However, in the book Taiping Shenghui Fang edited by Wang Huaiyin and Wang You in the Song Dynasty, toothpaste appeared, that is, the method of using ointment to treat teeth. Willow branches, Sophora branches and mulberry branches were boiled in water to make ointment, and ginger juice and asarum were added to wipe teeth, similar to brushing teeth with toothpaste today.
Medical books in the Yuan Dynasty also recorded brushing teeth with ointment. Imperial Hospital, compiled by court doctors in the Yuan Dynasty, records the scenes of people brushing their teeth with drugs, dipping their toothbrushes in drugs, brushing their upper and lower teeth, and then gargling with warm water in the Yuan Dynasty.