Humm, veddy interestink! Amalgums have probably been around for as long as quacksilver has been known, but use in fillings was the actual subject. Tanks ken
At 11:17 AM 8/15/01 -0400, you wrote: >Ode Coyote wrote: > >> [snip] >> >> Mercury was first introduced into dentistry in the 1840s, and was an immediate boon to the dental profession, for up until then, dentistry was very costly, since all fillings were silver or gold. >> >> How, pray tell, did they fill a tooth with pure silver or gold? >> Amalgums are fairly ancient. >> Ken > >Gold foil and sponge gold are very soft, and easily packed into a cavity. See http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.smiledoc.c om/dentist/denhis.html%23Filling for a good >history on the use of cork and lead in the 1500s, lead and tin in the 1700s, gold and amalgam in the 1800s. > >More information on the amalgam controversy can be found at: > >http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.thorne.co m/townsend/oct/mercury.html : > >'When amalgams were introduced to the US in 1833 by two French entrepreneurs, the Crawcour brothers, amalgam use was >denounced by a substantial number of American dentists. So strong was the opposition to amalgams that the American Society >of Dental Surgeons, formed in 1840, required its members to sign pledges promising not to use them. It is an intriguing >historical note that the common term for mercury in Germany in those years was "quick silver." The German pronunciation for >"quick" is "quack." Thus, those dentists who used mercury were called "quacks." This term has now come to mean anyone who >is an "ignorant pretender to medical skill" (The Random House Dictionary of The English Language). In 1848, the Society >found 11 of its New York members guilty of "malpractice for using amalgam" and suspended them. Internal debate over this >issue led to the demise of the Society in 1856. Its successor organization, the American Dental Association, sought to unite >dentists and, in its early days, did not take a stand on the issue of amalgam safety. The Encyclopedia Britannica reports that >"amalgams were not altogether in good repute until after 1895," which suggests that the ADA was supporting the use of >amalgams by then. ' > >Marshall > > > >-- >The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. > >To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: >silver-list-requ...@eskimo.com -or- silver-digest-requ...@eskimo.com >with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. > >To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com >Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html >List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com> > >
