elmonoenano t1_jbzilwp wrote on March 12, 2023 at 10:47 PM

Reply to comment by yns322 in Weekly History Questions Thread. by AutoModerator

There's a good paper on the NIH's site about this. Abscessed teeth was an incredibly deadly condition. The paper cites evidence from the 1500s that put it as the 5th or 6th leading cause of death. Basically if you didn't get the tooth removed and cleaned early, it was a serious life threatening condition.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10686905/

quantdave t1_jcq9o5i wrote on March 18, 2023 at 6:50 PM

Indeed, I remember encountering as cause of death the single word "Teeth" in London's 17th-century Bills of Mortality - around 6% of deaths as late as the 1690s.