7 Facts You Need To Know About Orthodontics

2. People have had crooked teeth for ages.

Since the time of Neanderthal man, crooked teeth have been one of the many problems. Archeologists have found Egyptian mummies with crude metal bands wrapped around teeth. Hippocrates wrote about “irregularities” of the teeth (misaligned teeth and jaws) around 400 BCE.

Thousands of years later, a French dentist, Pierre Fauchard, wrote about an orthodontic appliance in his 1728 landmark book on dentistry, The Surgeon Dentist: A Treatise on the Teeth. He described the bandeau, a piece of horseshoe-shaped precious metal that was literally tied to teeth to align them.