Özet:

Abstract Efforts to protect the dental health and beauty date back to ancient times. The toiletries found in Ur (3500 BC) included a toothpick as a cleaning tool. Galen recommended miswak made of the tree salvadore persica, and toothpicks made of the plant pistachia leentiscus. There are a toothpick and a cleaning set of ivory from the Roman era in Konya Archeological Museum. A toothpick was both a cleaning tool and an ornament in the Middle Ages. For whiter teeth, women in ancient Rome used a mixture of salt, alum, and urine. The excavation of the tools used for tartar removal one thousand years ago in Central Asia, and the traditional use of brushes made of plants along with toothpicks named hilal, indicate that the Turks attached importance to dental health and care. In Islamic medicine, the teeth were regarded as useful and valuable for they helped the digestion chewing the food, organized the pronunciation of the words during the speech, and contributed to the facial beauty; and they were defined as ‘‘the inspector of the language.’’ More importance was attached to the oral and dental cleaning after the discovery of microorganisms, since mouth constituted an entrance for germs and a transmission route for diseases such as cholera, dysentery, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. The production of tooth powder, tooth paste and brush, and mouthwash became widespread. These developments affected the Ottoman Empire to a certain extent. Specific preparations replaced the recommendations and compounds in the handwritten manuscripts. While the medical journals published novel formulas, the foreign dentists who came to Istanbul to work in the 19th and the early 20th century brought new dental care products and tried to sell them by newspaper advertisements. These products were mostly imported from Europe. Pharmacist Edhem Pertev began to produce Pertev Diş Macunu (Pertev toothpaste), the first domestic dental care product in the Ottoman Empire, in Pertev Pharmaceutical Production Plant (1895). The development of the domestic industry was promoted since the early years of the Republic, and this yielded an increase in the domestic production and led to the introduction of new dental care products. This study aims to describe the dental health developments in the classical Ottoman medicine in consideration of examples, and to provide an introduction to the dental care products put on the market since the mid-19th century and those produced in the Early Republic Era.

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