Things to make you appreciate your toothpaste more:
- The first toothpaste on record was from Egypt, around 2000 B.C. It was made from ground pumice and wine vinegar and brushed on with a chew stick.
- Roman toothpaste was made with human urine, and could be used as a mouthwash in its liquid form. The urine from the Portuguese was considered the strongest and therefore the most expensive. (Urine as an ingredient in toothpaste continued to be used through the 18th century. It pays to know these things before experimenting with time travel.)
- In the fourteenth century, whiter than white teeth were prized, and so barber-surgeons of the time would first file the teeth, then dab on a solution containing nitric acid called aquafortis, which, did produce white teeth until eventually it ate through the enamel and produced massive tooth decay about mid-life (which at this time was at about, what, age 20?)
- Louis XIV signed the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which granted religious freedom while in the middle of a month-long toothache he suffered rather than have the tooth extracted. Hmm...