DIG THIS
Robert E. Horseman, DDS
According to an Associated Press release date-lined New York quoting the French journal NATURE, researchers have stumbled upon the most riveting historical dental event since Branemark first drew breath in Sweden.
It seems these worthies, digging about in a Gallo-Roman cemetery just south of Paris, have unearthed what is apparently the earliest known dental implant; a wrought-iron tooth imbedded in the maxilla of a man who lived about 1,900 years ago in what is now France. The U.S. has never had such a distinction. Although we claim a Native American named "Iron Eyes Cody" and an army General was referred to out of earshot as "Iron Pants," we've never had an "Iron Tooth" anybody.
In our country one cannot go poking around in old burial grounds without incurring the righteous wrath of some vocal ethnic group or other. In France, however, most of the Visigoths are permanently deceased and the Romans have gone back to Italy because they say unequivocally the French are too overbearing and irritable for cohabitation and the pasta is beneath contempt. Not above protesting something just for the general obstructionism heck of it, the present-day French ancestors of the recently exhumed, seem disinclined to raise much hooha over this dental bonanza, concentrating instead on fulminating postal strikes and harassing American tourists.
Scientists have described the iron tooth, as seen in x-rays, to be a "perfect fit" in a tooth socket in the maxillary right. They claim the implant was "jammed into place" more than a year before the man died and further, that whoever made the tooth used his patient's original tooth as a model.
Seems to me that the French are making a lot of unwarranted assumptions here. A wrought-iron tooth would have almost certainly been made by a Gallic blacksmith, a profession not known for its knowledge of or adherence to the precepts of dental anatomy. It is doubtful the smithy, without the advice and guidance of Pierre Fauchard, could have forged a recognizable horse's tooth, let alone a humanoid upper bicuspid or molar. If you were presented a skull bearing a "jammed-in" iron implant, would you be so rash as to venture that the patient lived for more than a year after the procedure? I submit he passed to his reward on the same day as his operation, if not the same hour.
Undeniably, French vintners have produced some satisfyingly potent anesthetics, but there is not enough vin ordinaire in all of Paris to encourage me to eschew the morphine necessary to prevent my howling like a muezzin in such a travesty.
A more likely explanation of this discovery would be that the Gallic-Roman dentist submitted a pre-authorization for a vitreous carbon implant, titanium being still on the alchemist's drawing board. Stainless steel would have been his second choice had the technique of making steel stainless been generally available and not lodged solely in the clutches of the Ginzu family. The patient's HMO weaseled that implants were not a covered benefit, but in the interests of fairness, it would allow a fee equal to 80% of a simple extraction minus his annual deduction upon proof of eligibility. The frazzled dentist, realizing that ferrous plaque buildup on the wrought-iron implant (rust) would be another one of these ongoing marriage-type cases, jammed in the replacement with antipathy toward all and sensibly referred his patient back to the blacksmith for maintenance.
There is probably a plethora of these implant cases entombed all over France. That would explain Marie Antoinette's remark years later when she suggested that the populace eat cake; anything more substantial being too difficult to masticate.
Ancient Etruscans in northern Italy were known to have made partial dentures, crowns and simple bridges as early as 2,500 years ago. That these prostheses were so crude in their fabrication that a first-semester dental student of today responsible for a similar mishmash, would be summarily stripped of his name tag and drummed out of the corps, is beside the point.
Dental historians delight in pointing out that there is nothing new under the sun. They may be right, but when future researchers dig up one of my patients who may be wearing one of my own oral masterpieces, I hope the descendants of this cadaver will be unable to trace it back to me, even with the help of French researchers. I've left instructions in my will for my own descendants, when pressed, to deny everything. Tell 'em the blacksmith did it.
Originally published in the Journal of the California Dental Association, 01/98.