For as long as tooth decay has plagued humankind, toothache remedies have existed. The court physician of the Assyrian King Essarhaddon, who ruled from 681-669 B.C., wrote, "There is a great lot of remedies for [aching] teeth." Here are a few such remedies from throughout the ages.

The Talmud, the collection of ancient rabbinical writings that constitutes the basis of religious authority in Orthodox Judaism, notes that sour fruit juice is supposed to be good for a toothache. Another recommendation involved placing a garlic clove ground with oil and salt on the thumbnail, with a rim of dough around it.

People from any different cultures believed that tooth pain was caused by a "toothworm." The Aztecs of Mexico thought you could get rid of toothworms by chewing on hot chili. Vagbhata, an Indian surgeon who practiced around 650 A.D., recommended killing toothworms by filling the cavity of an aching tooth with wax, then burning out the wax with a hot probe. The personal doctor to Roman Emperor Claudius, Scribonius Largus, suggested fumigating the mouth with smoke to get rid of them. "These must be followed by rinsings of the mouth with hot water; in this way, sometimes, as it were, small worms are expelled."

The Islamic physician Avicenna, who lived from 980-1037, also advocated fumigation for toothache. "Take four grains each of henbane and leek seeds and two and one-half onions; knead these with goat fat until smooth, and from this paste make pills with a weight of one dirham [a silver coin]; burn one pill in a funnel under a covering of the patient's head."

Pliny the Elder, whose 37-volume Natural History served as the basis for scientific knowledge for centuries, believed one could cure a toothache simply by catching a frog under a full moon, prying open the frog's mouth, spitting into it and saying, "Frog, go, and take my toothache with thee!" (A tragic footnote: the famed naturalist died in 79 A.D. when he got too close to the erupting Mount Vesuvius.)

In Colonial times, Native Americans taught settlers that the bark of some trees could relieve toothaches. One treatment involved boiling the bark of the white poplar tree and applying it hot to the aching tooth.

Home remedies abounded in the Colonial era. Swedish botanist Peter Kalm, who visited the Colonies from 1747 to 1751, wrote in Travels into North America: "The remedies against the toothache are almost as numerous as the days in a year. There is hardly an old woman but can tell you three or four score of them, of which she is perfectly certain that they are as infallible and speedy in giving relief as a month's fasting, by bread and water, is to a burdensome paunch." Some of these folklore cures included chewing cloves; filling the cavity of aching teeth with a piece of garlic, a whole black peppercorn or some salt; or applying a poultice of dried mule's ear (wildflower) leaves.