People in the 1700s cleaned their teeth by rubbing them with cloth rags, using toothpicks, and applying homemade abrasive powders made from ingredients like crushed bone, chalk, and plant resins. The toothbrush as we know it didn’t arrive until the very end of the century, so most people relied on a combination of scraping, wiping, and rinsing to keep their mouths clean.
Cloths, Fingers, and Toothpicks
For most of the 1700s, the primary cleaning tool was a small piece of linen or rag wrapped around a finger. You’d dip the cloth into a tooth powder or salt and rub it across your teeth and gums. It wasn’t elegant, but it was effective enough to loosen food debris and apply whatever cleaning agent you had on hand. Sponges served a similar purpose. Pierre Fauchard, the French surgeon widely considered the father of modern dentistry, specifically recommended cleaning teeth with a sponge in his landmark 1728 text.
Toothpicks were the other everyday tool. Early versions were simply whittled twigs or wood splinters, but wealthier people carried picks made from ivory, shell, bronze, or silver. Ivory toothpicks were common among the upper classes throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, sometimes crafted into ornate accessories worn on a chain.
What Tooth Powders Were Made Of
The 1700s saw a flourishing of tooth powder recipes, passed around in household recipe books much like cooking instructions. These powders were the closest thing to toothpaste, and their ingredients ranged from surprisingly sensible to genuinely alarming.
A typical recipe called for a base of mild abrasives mixed with plant resins. One surviving 18th-century recipe lists cream of tartar (a stain remover still used in cooking), myrrh resin (a natural antiseptic), dragon’s blood (a plant resin that promotes healing), and a red iron-oxide clay called bole armoniac, which worked as an astringent. Another recipe adds Peruvian bark, the source of quinine, along with powdered cinnamon for flavor and its antiseptic properties. Cuttlebone powder, the same calcium-rich material now sold for pet birds, was used as a polishing agent.
Other common tooth powder ingredients across the century included crushed bone, eggshell, oyster shell, salt, chalk, pumice, and soot. Some recipes called for honey, wine, or vinegar as a liquid base.
Then there were the more extreme additions. Burnt alum, a potassium aluminum salt, showed up frequently and is still used by herbalists for gum disease. But some recipes also included “spirit of vitriol,” which is an old name for sulfuric acid. A person following that recipe would mix roughly twelve drops into their powder. Mastic resin, popular in harems as a breath freshener and tooth whitener, appeared in many formulations as well.
Fauchard’s Unusual Advice
Fauchard’s 1728 publication was the most influential dental text of the century, and his recommendations shaped how educated Europeans thought about oral care. He provided recipes for treating mouth infections using apothecary staples like oil of cloves and cinnamon. He also advocated for conservative treatment of cavities, arguing that decayed material should be scraped away and the tooth filled with lead or gold leaf rather than pulled entirely.
One of his more memorable suggestions was rinsing the mouth with your own urine, a practice rooted in older medical traditions. Urine contains ammonia, which does have mild cleaning properties, so the idea wasn’t entirely without logic, even if it sounds revolting today. Fauchard also warned against horsehair toothbrushes, which were available but could damage the gums.
The Toothbrush Arrives Late in the Century
The bristle toothbrush had actually existed since the late 1400s in China, where stiff hairs from the back of a hog’s neck were attached to bone or bamboo handles. But these brushes were rare curiosities in Europe for most of the 1700s, not something ordinary people owned.
That changed in 1780, when William Addis of Clerkenwald, England, began mass-producing toothbrushes. His design used a cow bone handle with boar hair bristles drilled and tied into the head. The story goes that Addis came up with the idea while in prison, where he fashioned a prototype from a saved animal bone and bristles. Once released, he turned the concept into a business. His company, Wisdom Toothbrushes, still exists today.
Even after Addis began selling his brushes, adoption was slow. Boar bristles held moisture and were prone to harboring bacteria, and the brushes were a luxury item for much of their early history. Most people continued using rags and tooth powders well into the 1800s.
What All This Did to Their Teeth
The results were about what you’d expect. Tooth decay was rampant across all social classes, though the causes varied. Wealthy people consumed more sugar, which had become increasingly available and fashionable throughout the 1700s, and their teeth often suffered for it. Poorer people ate less sugar but also had less access to any cleaning tools or powders.
Many of the abrasives in tooth powders were genuinely too harsh. Pumice, crusite bone, and chalk gradually wore down enamel with regular use. And ingredients like sulfuric acid, even in small amounts, could erode tooth surfaces over time. The resins and antiseptics in better-formulated powders (myrrh, cinnamon, mastic) likely did help with gum disease and infections, but they couldn’t compensate for the damage done by the abrasives they were mixed with.
Extraction remained the dominant “treatment” for a painful tooth. Fauchard catalogued five essential tools for dentists, including gum lancets, pincers, and a hook-shaped device called a pelican that was considered the most reliable extraction instrument. He even devised a primitive dental drill made from twisted catgut cord that could rotate to remove decayed material. But these interventions were painful, risky, and available only to those who could afford a trained practitioner. For most people in the 1700s, dental care meant a rag, some powder, and hope.