That often used to happen in the UK as well, until the early 20th century. Savings on dental costs were the publicly acknowledged reason, when fewer people regularly brushed their teeth and they tended to put more sugar in their tea and coffee, so their teeth may have decayed faster.
But I suspect there was another reason not publicly discussed. Women tended to have more children back then and, with higher infant mortality rates, many would have been pregnant more of the time, perhaps almost non-stop. A mouth without teeth is easier to use for oral sex, which women could substitute for their husbands' conjugal rights while pregnant, or if they or both wished to defer or avoid the wife being pregnant again!
How did you manage to duplicate a comment on your own blog? :-)
Don't forget, there were no birth control pills back then, and condoms were as thick and cumbersome as bicycle inner tubes. But there was still considerable incentive for birth control at times, and not every couple would have found either manual masturbation a sufficient substitute nor abstinence or anal sex acceptable.
As for the men who had all their gnashers removed, I'm not suggesting there was no financial incentive to avoid subsequent piecemeal extractions of rotten teeth. Also, tooth decay aside, in those days there wasn't today's skill in fixing grossly misaligned snaggle teeth. So, for either men or women, a full extraction may have been a necessary preliminary to supplying a set of false gnashers to make a mouth look more presentable and less ugly.
For example, it isn't uncommon for a row of gristle to develop under a child's front milk teeth, and before the days when this could be removed by quite an involved operation under general anasthetic it might divert the adult front teeth into growing almost outward instead of down, resulting in an absurd looking goofy mouth with outward-splayed front teeth.
That often used to happen in the UK as well, until the early 20th century. Savings on dental costs were the publicly acknowledged reason, when fewer people regularly brushed their teeth and they tended to put more sugar in their tea and coffee, so their teeth may have decayed faster.
But I suspect there was another reason not publicly discussed. Women tended to have more children back then and, with higher infant mortality rates, many would have been pregnant more of the time, perhaps almost non-stop. A mouth without teeth is easier to use for oral sex, which women could substitute for their husbands' conjugal rights while pregnant, or if they or both wished to defer or avoid the wife being pregnant again!
My girlfriend's father had this done in the UK, would have been around 1970.
...or maybe a toothless spouse was less attractive to their husband, thus limiting the number of pregmancies, or maybe you just have a dirty mind : )
How did you manage to duplicate a comment on your own blog? :-)
Don't forget, there were no birth control pills back then, and condoms were as thick and cumbersome as bicycle inner tubes. But there was still considerable incentive for birth control at times, and not every couple would have found either manual masturbation a sufficient substitute nor abstinence or anal sex acceptable.
As for the men who had all their gnashers removed, I'm not suggesting there was no financial incentive to avoid subsequent piecemeal extractions of rotten teeth. Also, tooth decay aside, in those days there wasn't today's skill in fixing grossly misaligned snaggle teeth. So, for either men or women, a full extraction may have been a necessary preliminary to supplying a set of false gnashers to make a mouth look more presentable and less ugly.
For example, it isn't uncommon for a row of gristle to develop under a child's front milk teeth, and before the days when this could be removed by quite an involved operation under general anasthetic it might divert the adult front teeth into growing almost outward instead of down, resulting in an absurd looking goofy mouth with outward-splayed front teeth.
Thanks for the detailed comment, John. Are you a dentist? From your knowledge of the subject I could imagine so.
This is common today among the Amish who live just a few miles from me.
Wow, that's incredible. I was pretty positive about the Amish, but this changes my view on them.