The Invention And Development Of Ancient Toothbrushes In My Country

Daoyuan, a famous Japanese monk who had studied in China, described in his book "Zhengyan Fa Zang" that he had seen the tufting toothbrush used by monks in China at the time of the Song Dynasty. The book reads like this: "In April of the sixteenth year of Jiading in the Great Song Dynasty, Guiwei (1223 AD), when I visited various mountain monasteries in China for the first time, I learned that...in addition to gargle, the monks still used cuts. 

The horsetail of Cunyu is planted on a utensil made of ox horns to wash teeth." The phenomenon Daoyuan saw is certainly not an isolated example, because there is a similar record in the "Health Care Compilation" written by Zhou Shouzhong in the Song Dynasty. In the Southern Song Dynasty Yan Yonghe's "Yan Shi Ji Sheng Fang", it is recorded that "tooth brushing with a toothbrush every morning, the number of days in the saponaria juice is more frequent, and there is no dental disease." 

It shows that there were toothbrushes with bristles at that time, which is about The earliest record of "brushing teeth" changed its name to toothbrush. This shows that toothbrushes had already appeared and used in my country's Song Dynasty at the latest.

In 1985, the archaeological team of Chengdu Museum and the Museum of Sichuan University found four bone toothbrush handles when they cleaned the ash pit of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) in Command Street, Chengdu. One of them is 17.8 cm long, with a slightly wider head and 1.1 cm at the widest point, but thinner, only 0.2 cm thick. 

The middle and rear part gradually narrows and thickens at the same time, about 0.5 × 0.4 cm. The front end of the hair transplanting part has 12 pores, two rows in vertical, each row has six holes, the diameter is 0.3 cm, the distance between the holes is equal, and the pores are connected up and down, which is slightly different from modern [1]. 

This discovery has advanced the history of the development of my country's tufted toothbrushes for more than 200 years. It is believed that there have been toothbrushes with tufts in the Tang Dynasty more than a thousand years ago. The toothbrush found here is the earliest toothbrush found in China so far.

At present, the appearance of these toothbrushes is the best physical testimony. These toothbrushes date from the Tang and Song Dynasties (618--1279 AD), and are more than 1,400 years ago. They are more than 1,000 years earlier than the toothbrushes that only appeared in Europe in 1678, and the shape of the toothbrush is the same as that of the current standard toothbrush. It is very similar, which shows that my country was the first country to invent and use toothbrushes. Therefore, the earliest history of using toothbrushes in my country is locked in the early Tang Dynasty. The invention of the tufted toothbrush is my country's major contribution to oral hygiene and human health.

The earliest real toothbrushes in the world were found in Chengdu, Chifeng and Qixian counties in my country, reflecting the importance of Chinese people on oral hygiene in ancient times, and at the same time showing that our people pay attention to oral hygiene, and their inventions and ingenuity in oral hygiene appliances are the world A very meaningful thing in the history of stomatology.