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Sir, as the most durable remnants postmortem of historic figures, teeth serve to connect us directly with personalities of the past. The recent recovery of the skeleton of King Richard III was identified by his dentition revealing his descendants.1 The reliquary of the sacred left canine tooth (cetiya) of Buddha recovered from his funeral pyre (543 BCE) and preserved in the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka is celebrated at an annual Buddhist ten day Festival, the Esala Perahera.
The recent opening of the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy features the recovered skeletal thumb and index finger of Galileo's right hand and his second upper left premolar. The pre-mortem loss of the bone attachment of this tooth suggests that he suffered from periodontitis. According to Cesare Paoleschi, a dentist who examined the tooth, 'the extensive worn surfaces reveal a tendency to bruxism: Galileo ground his teeth while sleeping'. Herein are revealed some intimate details of the health and habits of past personages based exclusively upon their dentitions. Teeth tell tales long after death.
References
King T E, Fortes G G, Balaresque P et al. Identification of the remains of King Richard III. Nat Commun 2014; 5: 5631.
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Sperber, G. Dental history: Teeth as reliquaries. Br Dent J 223, 620 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2017.934
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2017.934