Part II: How We Got Here¶
A Brief History of Getting It Wrong¶
In which the Tooth Fairy recounts the well-intentioned but ultimately misguided path that led humanity from ancient wisdom to modern antiseptic warfare, and explains why the pendulum is finally beginning to swing back
I've been watching your species deal with dental problems for a very long time.
I watched the ancient Egyptians pack cavities with a mixture of honey, ochre, and ground-up stone. I watched the Chinese develop sophisticated tooth-cleaning practices with chew sticks three thousand years before your current era. I watched the Greeks and Romans theorize about the causes of decay, coming remarkably close to truth before veering off into speculation about "worms" that ate teeth from within.
I watched the medieval barber-surgeons yank teeth with instruments that would make a modern dentist weep. I watched the first real dental professionals emerge in the 18th century, trying to systematize knowledge that had been accumulating haphazardly for millennia.
And then I watched the revolution that changed everything: the discovery that invisible organisms—bacteria—were responsible for disease. This was genuinely one of the great intellectual achievements of your species. But like many revolutions, it came with unintended consequences.
The germ theory of disease led, almost inevitably, to a specific way of thinking about oral health: identify the enemy microorganisms, and destroy them. This made intuitive sense. It aligned with the military metaphors that were already embedded in how people thought about illness (fighting disease, attacking infection, defending the body). And it produced real results—antiseptics saved lives, antibiotics transformed medicine.
But applied to the mouth, the "kill everything" approach was always an imperfect fit. Because the mouth, unlike a surgical wound, isn't meant to be sterile. It's meant to be inhabited. The microorganisms living there aren't invaders; they're residents. And as we've now seen, many of them are allies.
This section tells the story of how we got from chew sticks to chlorhexidine—how the wisdom of ecological management was replaced by the strategy of chemical warfare, why that strategy persists despite growing evidence of its limitations, and what the emerging science tells us about a better way forward.
It's a story about good intentions, partial understanding, and the remarkable human capacity to keep doing things that don't work because they feel like they should.