Keeping a smile looking at its best is a mix of art and science, and teeth whitening clinics benefit from decades of advanced scientific discoveries and improved techniques to help a person beam.
However, whilst there are whitening strips and treatments such as Enlighten available which provide effective results depending on your needs, there have been attempts to brighten people’s teeth for thousands of years.
Amidst some truly ridiculous treatments, what was the first modern, proven treatment that was both effective and safe?
Roman Goat Milk And Ammonia
For as long as there have been civilisations and ways to show off, gleaming white teeth have been seen as a hallmark of beauty, with Ancient Romans also seeing it as a symbol of purity and wealth.
Because of this, even when it was not clear exactly what would help to keep teeth looking their best, there were plenty of attempts to concoct treatments that might help.
Some of these, such as oil pulling, are ineffective but largely harmless, but the Romans and Egyptians had other ideas that were rather more ambitious and also more harmful to teeth.
In Egypt, the preferred treatment was a mix of pumice stone and vinegar, which would grind away at your teeth and douse them in acid, which might work in the very short term but would also very quickly ruin your teeth.
In Rome, however, it was much worse, with a combination of goat milk and human waste being used with the rather dubious logic that the latter has ammonia, a common cleaning agent.
These did not work, nor did the 17th-century barbershop trick of filing down teeth and applying acid directly to the teeth, proving that progress is indeed a very slow process at times.
Before this, the most popular whitening treatment, as suggested by Guy de Chauliac was to use a mix of vinegar, burnt salt and honey, which similarly used the same approach of grinding away and melting away teeth with acid.
From Bleaching Powder To Whitening
It would take until May 1884 for a Dr A.W. Harlan to describe a process of bleaching teeth that had been treated with a root canal using hydrogen peroxide (described at the time as Hydrogen Dioxide).
This is the most common active ingredient used in teeth whitening products to this day, and even after this demonstration to the American Medical Association, many doctors did not immediately adopt his treatment, instead sticking with calcium hypochlorite (aka chloride of lime) or a range of other ingredients.
As late as the 1960s, the most popular whitening treatment was pyrozone, which mixed hydrogen peroxide with ether. This was in no small part because pyrozone happened to be in a number of popular mouthwashes in the 1920s.
By the 1940s, these had been refined into gels, bringing teeth whitening close to its final form. The missing link was provided by Dr William Klusmeir, who created a system of bleaching using custom dental trays.
Despite this, it would take two decades for articles to be published in dental journals that highlighted its effectiveness.
