Before plastic took over in the twentieth century, toothbrushes were made from animal bone, boar hair, and a surprising variety of other natural materials. The history stretches back thousands of years, from simple twigs chewed to a frayed edge all the way to bone-handled brushes with coarse animal bristles that remained the standard well into the 1900s.
Chew Sticks: The Original Toothbrush
The earliest tooth-cleaning tools weren’t brushes at all. They were sticks. People across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia chewed the end of a twig until the fibers splayed out into a rough brush, then rubbed it against their teeth. This practice dates back at least 5,000 years and continues today in many parts of the world.
More than 180 plant species have been used as natural toothbrushes. The most common is Salvadora persica, known as miswak or peelu, a shrub native to the Middle East and parts of Africa. Others include neem, olive, and acacia. These weren’t random choices. Miswak contains natural silica that helps scrub away plaque, and modern studies have confirmed it has antiseptic, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory properties. It actively inhibits the growth of bacteria that cause tooth decay. Neem similarly contains compounds that fight oral bacteria. People didn’t have the science to explain why these particular trees worked, but centuries of use sorted the effective species from the rest.
Bone Handles and Boar Bristles
The toothbrush as we’d recognize it, a handle with bristles set into one end, originated in China around the fifteenth century. These early versions used bristles plucked from the necks and shoulders of cold-climate hogs, where the hair grew stiffest. The bristles were typically set into handles carved from bone or bamboo.
The design spread to Europe, where an Englishman named William Addis is credited with producing the first mass-manufactured toothbrush around 1780. Working from a prison cell, he carved a bone handle, drilled small holes into it, inserted clusters of boar bristles, and secured them with wire. After his release, he turned the idea into a business and died wealthy. His company, Wisdom Toothbrushes, still exists.
For the next 150 years, this basic formula barely changed. Bone was used almost exclusively for everyday toothbrush handles from the 1700s through the early 1900s. Cattle bone was cheap, easy to shape, and durable enough for the job. Wealthier buyers could opt for handles made of ivory, silver, gold gilt, or mother of pearl, but these were luxury items. Bamboo also remained in use, particularly in Asia. The bristles, meanwhile, stayed animal hair: boar was the standard, though horsehair occasionally appeared in softer varieties.
What Boar Bristles Were Actually Like
If you’ve ever used a boar bristle hairbrush, you have a rough idea of what brushing your teeth felt like before synthetics. The bristles were stiff, coarse, and not particularly gentle on gums. They also had a significant hygiene problem: natural hair is hollow and porous, which means it trapped moisture and bacteria between uses. Bristles didn’t dry quickly, and they couldn’t be sterilized without ruining them. They also fell out, wore unevenly, and split at the ends. For most of history, a toothbrush was a somewhat effective but far from ideal tool.
The best boar bristles came from cold-climate regions, particularly Siberia and northern China, where hogs grew thicker, stiffer hair to survive harsh winters. This made bristle supply dependent on international trade, a vulnerability that would eventually force the industry to change.
The Shift to Nylon in 1938
The era of natural materials ended in a single year. In 1938, DuPont introduced the first nylon-bristled toothbrush, marketed as “Doctor West’s Miracle Toothbrush.” Nylon was uniform, could be manufactured to any stiffness, dried faster than animal hair, and resisted bacterial buildup far better than porous boar bristles.
The timing was significant. By the late 1930s, the supply of natural bristles from China was dwindling as war disrupted trade routes. Japan announced its own synthetic bristle made from viscose threads around the same time, but DuPont’s nylon version won out. World War II then accelerated the transition: boar bristles became nearly impossible to import, while nylon production scaled up rapidly for military use. By the time the war ended, animal-hair toothbrushes were effectively obsolete. Bone handles gave way to plastic around the same period, though bone-handled brushes continued to be manufactured into the mid-twentieth century on a smaller scale.
Materials Timeline at a Glance
- 3000 BCE onward: Chew sticks made from miswak, neem, olive, and acacia wood
- 1400s: Chinese bristle brushes with boar hair set in bone or bamboo handles
- 1780: First mass-produced bone-and-boar-bristle toothbrush in England
- 1700s to 1900s: Bone handles standard for most buyers; ivory, silver, and mother of pearl for luxury versions
- 1938: DuPont’s nylon bristles replace boar hair; plastic handles begin replacing bone
- 1940s: WWII supply disruptions make the switch to synthetic materials permanent
For roughly 500 years, the toothbrush was an object made entirely from animals and plants: pig hair, cattle bone, bamboo, sometimes ivory from elephants or shells from mollusks. The shift to plastic and nylon happened fast, driven less by consumer preference than by chemistry breakthroughs and wartime necessity. Within a single decade, thousands of years of natural materials were replaced by synthetics that remain the standard today.