Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1914 — Queen of Sheba’s Teeth [ARTICLE]

Queen of Sheba’s Teeth

London Exhibit Shows How They Were Held Together by Gold —Other Relics. In the light thrown upon the ancient practice of medicine and surgery by the British Museum of Historical Medicine, Marylebone, is a ray cast upon the Queen of Sheba’s teeth, which have been loaned by the Royal College of Surgeons. These teeth have hitherto seemed to be naught but a solid black mass of bone and gold. They are now known to be something else, according to the exhibits made in the department of prehistoric dentistry. Relics contained there prove that gold was freely used to improve awkward teeth, but there is no trace of a stopping for a decayed spot. The procedure seems to have been to lash the teeth together with a silk-like gold wire and to wind it around and around all the teeth until their binding was so strong that none of them could fall out without the consent of the others. This accounts for the fact that the Queen of Sheba’s teeth appear like one solid mass. Among other exhibits are apothecaries' shops of the Middle Ages and alchemists’ laboratories of the Dark Ages, the latter fitted up with elembics, retorts, and dim red lights. There is also an eighteenth century barber shop, showing how men were bled in those days and how the barber’s pole came into use. There is, too, an exhibit showing how an attempt was

s— . made to fight the great plague of the middle of the fourteenth century. A picture gallery Includes a set of lancets, among them being split bamboo, flaked flint, and modem steel, and some exquisite anatomical models carved out of ivory. Possibly medicine goes back to an earlier date than surgery, and there is a section showing the masks of medicine men, side by side with shrunken faces of human beings, which once had skulls behind them, but are now about two inches square. There are also charms, amulets, and talismans in abundance.