The Making of a smile revolution
The following is an edited extract from The Smile Revolution by Colin Jones. It details the importance of good teeth and dental hygiene in the Parisian public sphere of the 18th century.
The Parisian world of sensibility encompassed both men and women, not least because good healthy white teeth were about more than good looks. They also facilitated convenience, comfort, and good health. Claude Géraudly itemized the multiple ways in which tooth care allowed an individual to fit into public-sphere sociability:
Not only do [teeth] contribute to the constitution of good health, they also offer a cheerful physiognomy, an agreeable tone of voice, an easy and distinct articulation, sweet breath and a graceful air which makes them highly suited to the civil commerce of urban life.
Dental writings emphasizing the social utility, both individual and collective, of teeth often referred to the issue of speech and enunciation. As Diderot’s Encyclopédie noted, ‘the loss of teeth disfigures the mouth and harms . . . pronunciation’. One needed teeth to be able to pronounce many words, comprehensibly at least. How, for example, could an habitué of the salons or the coffee-houses really function if they had no or few teeth — a question which, as we have seen, haunted the abbé Galiani? Nor was it only the aged who were affected by such matters of oral hygiene. Bad teeth meant bad breath. Furthermore, E´ tienne Bourdet also noted how ‘both sexes, being continually inclined to laugh or talk, cannot pronounce certain words without saliva accompanying them, and without offering a most disagreeable spectacle’. Tooth absence led to saliva spilling from the corner of the mouth and other unseemly gestures that acted as a turn-off in polite conversation.
The preservation of the teeth allowed the face to retain its habitual order
and regularity — without teeth, the lips, cheeks, and chin all caved in
inauspiciously, as Ricci had noted.
Loss of teeth was a step on the road to disenfranchisement from society and worse.
The loss of teeth, Lécluze pointed out, ‘causes deformities which leave the mouth in a disagreeable state, sight of which seems to proclaim the imminent destruction of the individual’. Toothlessness seemed to entail a loss of social identity in the Parisian public sphere. The pleasant mouth — the mouth that could smile the new smile — was inextricably tied up with individual subjectivity. ‘Do we not often see’, rhetorically enquired dentist Honoré Courtois, ‘individuals . . . of the fair sex who cannot proffer the least remark, nor give the slightest smile, without allowing all to see the lack of care that they have taken of their teeth.’
The recognizability and attractiveness of the face thus required the presence of the teeth, even if the mouth remained closed and if what remained of the teeth was invisible (a point that would not have been lost on Louis XIV’s portrait-painter, Hyacinthe Rigaud). The dentist offered a reassuring sense of self in the face-to-face encounters of the age of Enlightenment.
Dental authors dressed up their services in a patriotic and beneficent rallying narrative of social improvement in an enlightening society. The editorial rhetoric of the Affiches invariably highlighted, for example, how the advertiser conjoined the agreeable (làgréable) with the useful (lùtile), and this was precisely how dentists presented their own services and commodities.
In this they took their cue from other artisans of the body at this time: wig-makers in particular were prominent in stressing how their wares supplied good looks, comfort, convenience, and good health. So equipping individuals with the kind of teeth, mouth, and smile which allowed them to fit comfortably within the world of Parisian sociability was also an asset for the wider society. It also laid the groundwork for a functioning public sphere in which progress and societal felicity were to be found.
Dentists were thus willing and eager artisans in the construction of a body more attuned to the requirements of modern living. The working assumption was that healthy white teeth were a valuable asset for all adults. An ability to flash a dazzling smile was only one of a range of social advantages that one gained in having good (and preferably white) teeth. On the level of social utility as well as individual health and well-being, dental publicity represented poor teeth as both symptom and cause of sundry maladies.
Dentists stressed the need for teeth to be conserved so that they could aid mastication and digestion. The old suffered chronic indigestion through lack of teeth which worsened their overall health. At the other end of the spectrum, children’s teeth were a focus of particular concern in this dental literature, from the most scientific to the most popularizing examples. Good dentistry could prevent the perennial massacre of the innocents caused by fluxions and dehydration during teething. This fitted in with the populationist concerns of government over the period.
Colin Jones is Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London. He has published widely on French history, particularly on the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, and the history of medicine. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Past President, Royal Historical Society. Colin is the author of The Smile Revolution.
