The drawing shows us an expert, sitting behind the patient
lying, extracting a tooth and helped by two assistants. The man on the
left pokes fire with bellows, and the other on the right, holds fire
with a grip near the “dentist”.
Charaf-ed-Din (1404-1468) left us his famous Chirurgie of
Ilkhani, an ancient dental manuscript, written and illustrated by him in
1465. This Turkish manuscript of ancient dentistry is preserved at the
BNF (National Library of France).
The haunting face of an Inuit child who died in Greenland in the
1400s. In 1972, hunters roaming near an abandoned Inuit settlement
called Qilakitsoq chanced upon the graves of eight people. Six women and
two children that had been buried in the mid-15th century beneath an
overhanging rock that sheltered the burial site from sunlight, rain, and
snow. Slowly but steadily, dry winds and subzero temperatures
freeze-dried their remains as well as their sealskin and fur clothing.
Museum curators today sometimes use a similar process of freeze-drying
to conserve unearthed bog bodies and organic artifacts.
