The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth
Whether it be from baby teeth falling out, new teeth growing, in, accidents breaking teeth, or cavities, toothaches are a guarantee in life. The solutions to these problems are pretty boring, go to the dentist or wait a bit for that new tooth to grow in, but for some people in history it was a lot more eventful and the mystery as to why still stumps people today.
See? She’s excited
The Cases of Exploding Teeth
On August 31st, 1817 Reverend D.A. of Springfield Pennsylvania woke up to extreme pain in his tooth, the right superior canine to be exact. As the hours and minutes passed the pain increased exponentially to the point where he attempted to bury his head in the ground and jam his head in between the bottom of a fence.
When that didn’t obviously work, because why would it ever work, he plunged his head under the cold water of a spring. For some reason, this is the point his family finally said “I think there’s something wrong with the Reverend” and took him to a cabin to physically restrain him.
“He’s dug his head in the ground and tried smashing his face with a fence, I don’t think it’s serious yet.”
The next morning, having not slept from the pain, the Reverend was pacing back and forth like a madman when he suddenly heard a pistol shot coming from inside his mouth. Moments later he spit out tooth fragments and realized that his tooth had exploded. More importantly, the pain was all gone.
In 1830 and 1855, Pennsylvania had two other patients known as Mrs. Letitia D. and Mrs. Anna who also had one of their respective teeth explode after serious pain. In 1871 a young woman had a tooth explode with such force that she was unable to hear for a few days.
The good news is that these four cases are just about all the cases of exploding teeth from the 19th century. Sure 4 is a lot when you’ve grown up assuming teeth can’t explode but at least it’s not an epidemic. So what exactly happened in those four cases?
Theories on Why Teeth Explode
The first three cases I listed above came from Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.) William Henry Atkinson who wrote an article in the January 1861 issue of The Dental Cosmos detailing those cases, but when I say “detailing” I mean the opposite.
See, these weren’t Atkinson’s patients when the explosions happened, he was told about the explosions later on. For example, when Reverend D.A.’s tooth exploded in 1817, Atkinson was only two years old and toddlers don’t have good hand-eye coordination so they can’t be dentists at that age.
“Are you kidding me?!”
This brings us to our first theory on what might explain the exploding teeth, it’s a little something I like to call — exaggeration. Personally, I believe these patients' teeth did “explode” but I agree with some researchers that maybe the “explosions” were exaggerated over time and every time the story was told.
Think of it like a game of telephone, the details change ever so slightly every time it’s retold. Atkinson wasn’t aware of Reverend D.A. and Mrs. Letitia D’s exploding teeth until decades after it happened. For Ms. Anna, it was about 6 years later but Atkinson’s telling of her tooth explosion was noticeably less dramatic.
Metals and Chemicals
But while the re-tellings of their stories may have been dramatized, their teeth did actually burst and to this day it’s a mystery as to why. The leading theory though comes from the chemicals and metals dentist used to use for fillings.
Today, to fill a cavity, dentists will use what’s called a dental amalgam which is a mixture of powdered metals and liquid mercury, but in the early 19th century mercury wasn’t always used and the metals that were used could have reacted violently to each other. If a filling wasn’t done correctly and left a gap between the filling and what remained of the tooth, it is possible it could have caused a build-up of gases that eventually “exploded”.
To this day there isn’t a universally accepted reason for the explosions and Atkinson didn’t record if those patients had improper fillings or any fillings. Overall the explosions were extremely rare and without more information, no one can really say how or why it happened but you can rest assured that your teeth won’t explode… maybe… I don’t know.
Quick Facts
While dental amalgams containing mercury grew in popularity from 1830 onward, it wasn’t done by every dentist. For example in New York it’s estimated around half of dentists were using mercury amalgams in 1845
Due to the mercury in dental amalgams, many dentists refused to use it and the American Society of Dental Surgeons even forced all its members to sign a pledge refusing to use it
The first mercury amalgams were made from mercury and fillings of silver coins
