What Did People Do When a Tooth Wouldn’t Stop Hurting?

What did people do when a tooth wouldn’t stop hurting — long before dentists, X-rays, antibiotics, and modern anesthesia? For thousands of years, tooth pain forced people to try everything from medicinal plants and strange remedies to barber-surgeons and terrifying extraction tools. Some ancient cultures even believed a tiny “tooth worm” was responsible for the pain. In this episode of Somehow We Survived, we follow the evolution of toothache treatment across history — from ancient remedies and Roman medicine to medieval tooth pullers, Pierre Fauchard, laughing gas, early anesthesia, and eventually the modern dental care we know today. It turns out that something as ordinary as getting a painful tooth treated is one of the modern luxuries our ancestors could only dream about. Subscribe to Somehow We Survived for more stories about how humans solved everyday problems before modern technology. #history #dentistry #toothache #SomehowWeSurvived #medicalhistory