Throwing Tooth Decay for a Floss
What do you think about as you lie stupefied and inert on your Barcalounger following your Thanksgiving feeding frenzy? That is, assuming that you’re capable of coherent thought. I bet I know. You’re probably thinking about (timpani, please). . .flossing!
It’s certainly what the National Flossing Council wants anyone capable of coherent thought to think about. In fact, they’ve gone so far as to proclaim the day after Thanksgiving – you guessed it – “National Flossing Day.”
Now just to be clear, we’re talking about floss as in the threadlike stuff you slide – or should slide, you slacker – between your teeth at least once or better yet twice every day. We’re NOT talking about the other FLOSS – “Free/Libre/Open Source Software” – which is a whole ‘nother thing (and which I can tell you from personal experience, easily breaks and gets stuck between your molars).
Whether they use it or not, many people find floss amusing, partly because in the first “Austin Powers” movie, Austin and Vanessa use a four-foot long strand of it to foil Dr. Evil’s easily-escapable situation involving an overly-elaborate and exotic death.
Beyond that, floss elicits chuckles because the word just sounds mildly goofy. And also because the guy who’s generally credited with “inventing” floss was named Levi Spear Parmly, which also just sounds mildly goofy. And to top it off, Parmly was born in Vermont in a town called Braintree, which definitely sounds mildly goofy.
Parmly was – this may shock you – a dentist, who practiced in a day and age when the typical American cleaned his or her teeth with a damp cloth dipped in either salt or – honest – gunpowder, which, in the pantheon of “Things You Really Shouldn’t Put in Your Mouth” is right up there with Free/Libre/Open Source Software.
Appalled by what he considered an epidemic of bad – as in “Austin Powers bad” – teeth, Parmly began experimenting with early forms of floss. He became excited by what he found between his teeth. That is, he saw how much cleaner his and his patient’s teeth were. He began to actively promote his views on proper care of the choppers. In 1819, he published a book titled, if memory serves me correctly, “Proper Care of the Choppers.”
No, wait, it was called “A Practical Guide to the Management of the Teeth,” and although it never used the word “floss,” it strongly encouraged the use of waxed silken thread, especially after Thanksgiving dinner, when typically enough debris can be removed to provide a filling late-night snack.
It took 17 years for another influential book to be written about proper oral hygiene. It was called “Guide to Sound Teeth,” and it finally introduced into the American vernacular the word “Shearjashub.” Because that was the name of the author: Shearjashub Spooner.
Shearjashub, who, like Parmly, was from Vermont, advocated cleaning between teeth with silk thread “powdered with pumice stone.” Also like Parmly, Shearjashub apparently didn’t do anything about patenting such an effective tooth cleaner.
That didn’t happen until 1874, when a patent on a waxed silken dental thread was issued to a guy named – I swear – Asahel M. Shurtleff. With that mildly goofy name, whaddya bet he was ALSO from Vermont?
Fast forward 100 years, which according to my calculations puts us around 1946, and we find that floss is readily available everywhere and being used by (timpani, please). . . just about no one.
Even today, something like 85% of Americans say they don’t floss, although they do enjoy reading news stories about people using floss to suture wounds, repair torn boat sails, and foil easily-escapable situations involving overly-elaborate and exotic death..
This lack of interest in flossing hasn’t deterred our nation’s Strategically Vital Flossing Industry. In the last 30 years or so, there have been more than 1,300 patents awarded for floss-related products, the majority of them gizmos that are supposed to entice kids to floss.
My kids have experimented with a lot of these products: cute little handheld flossers in the shape of sharks or dinosaurs or Austin Powers. Some have even come coated with breath fresheners, sweeteners, and tea tree oil.
But none of these thrill my kids, who complain that no one makes a flosser with the added ingredient they REALLY want: gunpowder.
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
It’s certainly what the National Flossing Council wants anyone capable of coherent thought to think about. In fact, they’ve gone so far as to proclaim the day after Thanksgiving – you guessed it – “National Flossing Day.”
Now just to be clear, we’re talking about floss as in the threadlike stuff you slide – or should slide, you slacker – between your teeth at least once or better yet twice every day. We’re NOT talking about the other FLOSS – “Free/Libre/Open Source Software” – which is a whole ‘nother thing (and which I can tell you from personal experience, easily breaks and gets stuck between your molars).
Whether they use it or not, many people find floss amusing, partly because in the first “Austin Powers” movie, Austin and Vanessa use a four-foot long strand of it to foil Dr. Evil’s easily-escapable situation involving an overly-elaborate and exotic death.
Beyond that, floss elicits chuckles because the word just sounds mildly goofy. And also because the guy who’s generally credited with “inventing” floss was named Levi Spear Parmly, which also just sounds mildly goofy. And to top it off, Parmly was born in Vermont in a town called Braintree, which definitely sounds mildly goofy.
Parmly was – this may shock you – a dentist, who practiced in a day and age when the typical American cleaned his or her teeth with a damp cloth dipped in either salt or – honest – gunpowder, which, in the pantheon of “Things You Really Shouldn’t Put in Your Mouth” is right up there with Free/Libre/Open Source Software.
Appalled by what he considered an epidemic of bad – as in “Austin Powers bad” – teeth, Parmly began experimenting with early forms of floss. He became excited by what he found between his teeth. That is, he saw how much cleaner his and his patient’s teeth were. He began to actively promote his views on proper care of the choppers. In 1819, he published a book titled, if memory serves me correctly, “Proper Care of the Choppers.”
No, wait, it was called “A Practical Guide to the Management of the Teeth,” and although it never used the word “floss,” it strongly encouraged the use of waxed silken thread, especially after Thanksgiving dinner, when typically enough debris can be removed to provide a filling late-night snack.
It took 17 years for another influential book to be written about proper oral hygiene. It was called “Guide to Sound Teeth,” and it finally introduced into the American vernacular the word “Shearjashub.” Because that was the name of the author: Shearjashub Spooner.
Shearjashub, who, like Parmly, was from Vermont, advocated cleaning between teeth with silk thread “powdered with pumice stone.” Also like Parmly, Shearjashub apparently didn’t do anything about patenting such an effective tooth cleaner.
That didn’t happen until 1874, when a patent on a waxed silken dental thread was issued to a guy named – I swear – Asahel M. Shurtleff. With that mildly goofy name, whaddya bet he was ALSO from Vermont?
Fast forward 100 years, which according to my calculations puts us around 1946, and we find that floss is readily available everywhere and being used by (timpani, please). . . just about no one.
Even today, something like 85% of Americans say they don’t floss, although they do enjoy reading news stories about people using floss to suture wounds, repair torn boat sails, and foil easily-escapable situations involving overly-elaborate and exotic death..
This lack of interest in flossing hasn’t deterred our nation’s Strategically Vital Flossing Industry. In the last 30 years or so, there have been more than 1,300 patents awarded for floss-related products, the majority of them gizmos that are supposed to entice kids to floss.
My kids have experimented with a lot of these products: cute little handheld flossers in the shape of sharks or dinosaurs or Austin Powers. Some have even come coated with breath fresheners, sweeteners, and tea tree oil.
But none of these thrill my kids, who complain that no one makes a flosser with the added ingredient they REALLY want: gunpowder.
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
posted by Don Stuart at 8:31 AM
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