"The more often we treat our teeth, the easier it is to identify us by them": what teeth can tell about the life and death of a person

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

An excerpt from the book of a forensic anthropologist - a man who can restore the history of life from the remains.

AST publishing house will soon publish “Recorded on Bones. Secrets Left After Us”- a book by the forensic anthropologist, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Professor Sue Black. This is a fascinating scientific pop and a real find for those who are interested in forensic science and detective stories. With the permission of the publishing house, Lifehacker publishes an excerpt from the second chapter.

Teeth are the only visible part of the human skeleton, which makes them extremely valuable for identification. They also help establish the age of the owner. It is very interesting to see how a child's face changes as they grow up. Growth is mainly due to the need to accommodate more and more teeth. Teeth grow relatively painlessly, and this process takes a long time, but it can be seen in photographs of children if they are removed once a year from an early age. This is exactly what I did with my daughters.

By the age of two, a chubby baby face has been replaced by a more recognizable one: the child turns into a miniature version of the person he will become in the future. Twenty deciduous teeth have already formed and erupted, so the face must be mature enough to contain them all. By age 6, the face changes again, this time as a result of the eruption of the first permanent molar at the back of each quadrant of the mouth. Now the child has 26 visible teeth, and the growth process continues in the jaws, which is not visible to the eye.

The teeth of sheep, pigs, cows and horses appear on our tables much more often than human teeth. If the tooth is indeed human, then which of the 20 that a child has, or of the 32 for an adult? Top or bottom? Left or Right?

Teeth can tell a lot about the life of the animal or person to whom they belonged, both from a phylogenetic (or evolutionary) and ontogenetic (individual) point of view. Our teeth match our diet: fangs are essential for predators, but for herbivores they are overkill. Both have incisors and molars, molars, but these molars are of different types. In carnivores, they are carnassal, or cutting, designed to tear pieces of meat, and in herbivores they are chewing. Since humans eat both meat and plants, they have incisors to grab food, canines to bite, and molars to chew.

Sometimes the teeth that get to scientists are really human, but from historical burials. The absence of traces of modern treatment is an important temporary indicator here, as is the degree of wear and tear, which does not correspond to the current principles of nutrition. The high degree of tooth decay and the corresponding decay indicate a modern diet rich in sugar, while molars from archaeological remains are often worn down to dentin and even stronger due to the increased chewing characteristic of ancient times.

The third, artificial, set of teeth is often the most intriguing: just look at what curious examples come across in the historical remains and what degree of ingenuity of the first dentists they demonstrate.

When in 1991 I worked in London as part of a team that exhumed the crypt of St. Barnabas in West Kensington, we opened the graves of three wealthy women, from whose teeth it was possible to judge the problems that their mistresses faced during their lifetime, and the attempts of the then dentists. problems to solve.

Sarah Francis Maxfield, wife of Captain William Maxfield, a campaigner in East India who was appointed MP for Grimsby County on the south bank of the Humbert estuary in Lincolnshire in 1832, was buried in the crypt in 1842. She was lowered into the ground next to her husband, who had died five years earlier. Everything else that we learned about Sarah, we gleaned from the remains of the skeleton and teeth, preserved inside the lead coffin. She was definitely wealthy enough to afford not just a triple coffin (made of wood and lead, typical of the rich of the era) after death, but also expensive dentures during her lifetime.

When we exhumed Sarah, our eyes were immediately attracted by a sparkle of gold that cannot be confused with anything else.

On examination, we found out that her right upper central incisor was sawed off, then, probably, it was cauterized with acid, after which a solid gold bridge was fixed on top. Since the gold does not tarnish, it sparkled against the backdrop of a brownish puddle of decayed soft tissue inside the coffin almost 150 years after burial. The bridge, which remained in its place in the oral cavity, went to the right upper first molar, on which it was fastened with a ring, also gold.

Unfortunately, this tooth was visibly decayed and the bone thinned due to chronic suppuration that lasted until death. The molar was held exclusively on the dental bridge. It is difficult even to imagine how much pain she experienced when she tried to chew, and what kind of smell came from her mouth.

Harriet Goodrick, 64 when she died in 1832, also lay in an expensive triple coffin, but spent less on her dentures. Harriet wore a false upper jaw, which at the time of examination of the remains had already fallen out of her mouth. Not surprising, because she had nothing to hold on to. When this jaw was made for Harriet, it still had a single tooth in the upper row, because the denture had a hole on the right side corresponding to the position of the first molar: most likely, the denture was made taking into account the presence of this last tooth.

However, then Harriet lost it too, so there was nothing to hold the denture on. Accordingly, she could no longer serve as intended; obviously, by inserting it, the person preparing the body for burial showed his respect for the deceased.

He made sure that even in death she retained her dignity and, probably, pride in her appearance.

It must be said, however, that that prosthesis did not look particularly convincing. It consisted not of separate artificial teeth, but of a single piece of bone (now it is no longer possible to establish with certainty which animal it belonged to; most likely, it was ivory, but in the 19th century the fangs of a hippo and walrus were also used), the teeth on which were approximately were indicated by vertical lines, so the resemblance to the real ones was very distant. Such prostheses, quite typical of the time, were often made by watchmakers rather than dentists or doctors, and their anatomical fit left much to be desired. After lying in the coffin for more than 150 years, this false jaw acquired a brownish tint from contact with the caustic liquid in which it was located (a mixture of decomposition products of soft tissues and the inner wooden walls of the coffin, forming a weak humic acid). So when we opened the coffin, we saw Harriet with brown teeth, which I am sure she herself would not like very much.

A Rolls-Royce denture belonged to the last of the three, Hannah Lenten. Hannah, who was 49 when she died in 1838, clearly had a large fortune. She lay in an ornate lead coffin, and in her mouth was a luxurious and highly ingenious prosthesis.

Since dentures like Harriet's, made of bone, looked little like real ones, people for whom price didn't matter bought themselves real human teeth.

Dentists ran advertisements in newspapers for the purchase of human teeth. Sometimes they were supplied by the grave robbers who were active in those days. Sometimes teeth were pulled out from dead soldiers (preferably young ones) who died on the battlefield. After the Napoleonic Wars, they began to be called "Waterloo's teeth". Human teeth could be attached to an ivory prosthesis, but Hannah's Waterloo teeth were screwed onto an artificial jaw made of solid gold - an unthinkable luxury in the Victorian era. If you remember that at the beginning of the 19th century, even an ivory prosthesis with human teeth cost more than a hundred pounds sterling (about 12,000 in modern money), it remains only to be amazed at how much she spent on hers.

Such extravagant creations were mainly engaged in by Claudius Ash, a jeweler who switched to making expensive dentures for the richest strata of society. He became the leading dentist in Britain, and by the middle of the 19th century dominated the European market for expensive and modern dental prosthetics.

Because molars in the back of the jaw have multiple roots and are more difficult to remove than front teeth with a single root, they were more often left in place. For aesthetic reasons, the masters tried to make the front teeth look as good as possible, but the clients were not particularly worried about the back teeth, so if they replaced them, then they were crowns made of ivory or tusks of other animals.

However, Hannah Lenten had six molars removed, and she was the proud owner of both the upper and lower false jaws. To keep them in place and not accidentally fall out, putting the hostess in an awkward position, the upper jaw was attached to the lower pair of golden springs, fixed with gold screws, so when Hannah opened her mouth, the upper jaw automatically lifted, pressed against the palate. In total, her dentures had six front single-rooted "Waterloo teeth", fixed with gold fasteners on the upper jaw made of cast gold. Six replacement molars (three on each side) were made of ivory and also fixed with gold screws. The lower jaw prosthesis, although incomplete, made of ivory, carried six more real human teeth, naturally not her own.

It is noteworthy that even at a time when tooth decay could not be cured or prevented, and therefore teeth fell out much more often, people were still worried about how they would look without them.

And so much so that such wealthy ladies put up with both financial losses and physical discomfort, just to keep their charming smile.

Sarah, Harriet and Hannah, who had been lying with their precious dentures in their mouths 1, 5 centuries after their death, “left” the graves under the Church of St. Barnabas so that it could be restored and repaired. Their remains were cremated and their ashes scattered on consecrated ground, but their dentures have survived as works of dental art from past eras.

Pathologist and forensic anthropologist Sue Black studies human remains for legal and scientific purposes. By bones and teeth, she can not only find out the gender, race and age of a person, but also restore the history of his life. In the book “Recorded on the Bones. Secrets left after us the author allows you to look into the working days of forensic experts and writes about real detective investigations.