19th Century Dentists Documented Exploding Teeth Cases

BBC News (UK) (3/2, Morris) reports that several cases of exploding teeth were documented by 19th Century dentists, including Pennsylvania dentist WH Atkinson, who “documented an outbreak of exploding teeth” in the journal The Dental Cosmos. In a 1965 publication, the British Dental Journal also detailed “tales of detonating dentine throughout history.” The article adds that “although there were five or six reported cases in the 19th Century, there has been no documented case of exploding teeth since the 1920s.” Despite several hypotheses for why these cases occurred, no evidence exists supporting the explanations. The article concludes, “So either an unknown process was causing the explosions or the patients were exaggerating symptoms which were far more mundane.”