The search for remedies to treat dental disease is as old as mankind; such is the importance of the stomatognathic system (mouth, jaws, teeth and related structures) in the evolution of man and society. This paper concentrates on the Kitab al-tasrif, a medical treatise completed in 1000 CE by the famous Arab physician, surgeon and pharmacologist Abulcasis (Abu al-Qasim al Zahrawi; 936-1013), from Córdoba (Andalusia, southern Spain). Volume (Maqal) XXI of this 30-volume-long work, is dedicated to mineral panaceas for diseases of the mouth and teeth. The remedies detailed by Abulcasis are compared with those in Dioscorides' much earlier Materia Medica (first century CE), the later Hortus sanitatis (1496) by Johannes de Cuba and recent pharmacopoeias to trace and evaluate the evolutionary path of mineral-containing drugs and dental compounds, and to account for the survival of many of them in therapeutic compounds. Although effective, some of the old mineral remedies have a narrow therapeutic range and have no place in current pharmacology; however, many of them are still useful as astringents, haemostatics, antiseptics, teeth whiteners, remineralizers or caustics.
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