Romans Used Crushed Mouse Brains as Toothpaste

While we admire ancient Romans for their sophisticated engineering and law, their approach to personal hygiene was a peculiar mix of the practical and the bizarre. Concern over bad breath and stained teeth, especially among the wealthy, led to the creation of various tooth-cleaning powders and pastes. Writers like Pliny the Elder documented recipes that called for a range of ingredients, from the logical, like powdered charcoal and bark, to the truly strange. These concoctions included everything from the ash of animal hooves and burned eggshells to the more startling inclusion of pulverized mouse or rabbit brains.

The effectiveness of these ancient toothpastes varied wildly. The core principle behind many of them, however, was sound. The use of gritty, abrasive substances like crushed oyster shells, bone, or pumice would have physically scoured plaque and surface stains from the teeth, a method not entirely different from the mild abrasives used in modern toothpaste. While the scientific basis for using mouse brains is lost to history—it was likely rooted in folk medicine or superstition—other ingredients had surprising benefits. Some Romans even used urine as a mouthwash, correctly believing that the ammonia it contained had powerful cleansing and whitening properties.