Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Exploding Teeth

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Canonically, Dr. Sydnee doesn’t know much about teeth, but there are several cases in dental journals about teeth that spontaneously exploded. Dr. Sydnee tries to make sense of a few mysterious account of these events, conceding that some medical mysteries remain unexplained.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, this one is about some books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones. Merrill Turb, Misguided Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sydney McElroy. And I'm Justin McElroy. This is a weird one, Justin. Why is that? I mean, I can tell from the title that it was. Well, don't say the title. I would never say the title. Don't spoil it.

No, I would not. I didn't even want to put it in the not. I didn't even wanna put it in the title because I didn't wanna spoil it for you either, but I also save these outlines so that they're searchable for me later. And so if I don't have it in the title, it would be hard to search it. Yeah, so you have to put your indexing and filing

and organizational structure over narrative suspense. I respect that. You know how organized I am with the indexing and the filing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're just obsessive about that, just making sure everything is just so.

I know, I was working at Harmony House today, and my poor residents and students who train with me, they'll offer to get something. I'll be like, I need to get this for the patient, and I'm in the exam room, and they're like, well, I'll go get it, where is it? for the patient. And I'm in the exam room, and they're like, well, I'll go get it. Where is it? I'm like, okay, in my bedroom, which by the way, is, I mean, if you've ever looked inside, you can barely move. I mean, literally, you have to stand sideways and scoot your way through my little my supply room. I was like, it's, if you go in,

and then look to your left, you're going to see a shelf where there's some small cups and a collection of thermometers, and also some prenatal vitamins. Now, to the right of that, you're going to see a shelf where there's some small cups and a collection of thermometers and also some prenatal vitamins. Now to the right of that, you're gonna see a box that's entirely full of Imodium. Now right behind that and not where you see the stack of antibiotic ointment or the rapid HIV test, but right behind that you're gonna see.

Yeah. Now digitally though, Sydney goes for just a big vat of DocX files. Just a big, a bunch of files with the.docx file extension that she just pours into a big, big vat. Is that not how you do it? And then she needs one, she just puts on the snorkel and the mask and just dives in and look for the DocX file she needs.

No, you go to, you go down to, what is it, Finder? You go to Finder and click on Finder and then you type in the name of the thing you're looking for in Finder and it finds it. It's a good structure, it works. It works for you, but anyway. You know I don't know anything about teeth. This is, yeah, canonical. Famously, I don't know anything about teeth. This is, yeah, canonical.

Famously, doctors don't know about teeth. We leave teeth to dentists, and we do not interfere with dentistry. Yes, you don't enter the tooth lands. We do not enter the lands of teeth. We are not taught about teeth. We don't talk about teeth. Here's what we know about teeth.

Sometimes people come in and they're like, my tooth hurts, and I'm gonna shine a light. You know what time that they usually do this? You guessed it. Go on, Sid. What do we know about teeth? Sometimes people come in and they're like, my tooth hurts and I'm gonna shine a light. You know what time that they usually do this? You guessed it. Go on Sid, sorry. I'm gonna shine a light in your mouth and look at it, which is really hilarious.

Cause I, what am I looking at? What are we, what are we even looking at? I'm like, well, I see the tooth. And like, if it's black, that's bad. And then if the gum looks. If it's black, take it out Jack. If there's a hole. That one if the gum looks if it's back if it's black take it out Jack There's a hole That one else should do drill it drill it

I mean, I don't really do that. When you get a cavity, you know, the first thing they do is make it bigger. Come on So usually what I'll do is I'll shine a light in your mouth I'll look and go Yeah, I bet that hurts, doesn't it? And then the patient says it does. That's why I ask you to look at it. And I'll say, mm, we should probably do some antibiotics. Mm, yeah, mm-hmm. And then you should see a dentist.

And that's it. Like, that's what we do because that's how much doctors know about teeth. Unfortunately, for 500 years, the tooth court and we have feuded and we are no longer permitted in their lands We have a whole episode about that about the rift between doctors and Dennis if you ever want if you want to check that out I thought this story even though it is in the teeth realm was interesting enough The teeth realm has long been a mystery to us doctors

Sorry in the court of gums and molars. I thought we could talk about this because even people who have actual dental knowledge don't seem to know how to unravel this sort of historical medical dental mystery. So thank you, Samantha, for sending me this story. I had never heard it and I was very excited to read about it.

I am going to start with some initial accounts of a strange dental phenomenon that they were recorded in the dental cosmos. Whoa. I know. The dental cosmos was the first American dental journal, like the first scientific journal about dentistry was called the Dental Cosmos, which man,

can you imagine there was a time where you were like, I need to learn about either dentistry or medicine, and I could read the Dental Cosmos or the Lancet. So cool. Journal of blah, blah, blah is so boring. And that's what we call everything now. The Dental Cosmos is good. So The Dental Cosmos was a journal that ran from 1859

until 1936. And then it was absorbed into the American Dental Association. And so now I believe it is called the Journal of the American Dental Association. And it was then absorbed into Entertainment Weekly. So now it is just a webpage. And now Disney owns it all.

It was the, like I said, it was the first scientific dental journal. It was very highly respected. And I say that because I want you to understand how seriously this is like, these reports of this phenomenon were placed in what would be akin to, well, I mean, I guess the Journal of the American Dental Association today,

or for those of us who are physicians and think about physician things, like the New England Journal, right? So like, this was a big deal. In volume two, issue six of the journal, which was published in January of 1861, there is a collection of several case reports. And you can do that sometimes in scientific journals,

like it's not really a study I did. I collected case reports of this one specific disease or treatment or whatever phenomenon to describe it and try to further understand it. The first case is a story of a Reverend from Springfield, Pennsylvania, who began to experience a toothache on August 31st of 1817. So this was published in 1861.

These are just three accounts from, I mean, really like the 50 years before. A long time separating this happening in the publication of this tale. Well, I mean, there's a long time separating me talking about it in the publication of this. So the pain was in his right superior canine or first bicuspid.

When you find out what happens here, the fact that we don't know exactly which tooth it was is pretty strange and already cause a lot of stuff into question. So either way, one of these two teeth, it was so severe and they document like, he tried burying his head in the ground. He tried sticking his head under a fence,

which I don't know what that would, I was sitting there trying to think, is that an expression? It hurts so bad, I stepped my head in. But why? Why? It's like, I think to distract memory. Just like to feel something else. So he stuck his head under a fence?

Yeah. He plunged his head into cold water to no avail. It hurt so terribly. He was delirious with pain all day, all night, and then the next morning on the 1st of September at 9 a.m., he heard a very loud, sharp cracking sound in his mouth, and his tooth, quote, burst into fragments. Whoa!

Immediately following this, the pain vanished, and he was fine. Oh, can you imagine? What a relief that must have been. I'm kind of jealous. That his tooth exploded? No, but like to be in that kind of pain and then all of a sudden be out of that kind of pain, I mean, an exploding tooth is a bummer, obviously.

But I mean, it's a big finish. It is a big finish. It's a big finish. It was dramatic. It's a dramatic big finish. I am certain. Like you you wanna have something to share. Well, okay, can I ask you a question actually, doctor? Wouldn't it have been more upsetting

if it had just stopped and nothing had exploded? Isn't that more mysterious? Isn't that in many ways more troubling? Because why did it stop? Well. And what was it? Listen, I cannot consider how troubling that may be because there are, let me tell you a little secret, there's a lot of times in medicine where something's wrong

and you're like, this feels weird or this hurts or this is, I don't know, odd, and we're like, hmm, hmm, let's wait a few minutes. And then it goes away and we're like, hmm, oh good, if it went away, it must not be too serious. There are lots of things where the human body just feels weird and then doesn't. Doesn't later, yeah. I don't know.

That is something that I think we don't say enough. That is something to expect with your human experience and your human body on this human planet is at times your body will feel weird and then it won't. And you can ask me, and I might come up with some theories. And occasionally maybe we would be able to figure it out, but there are gonna be a lot of times where I'm like, I don't know, but I'm sure glad it stopped.

I think the whole reason we develop spoken language as animals is so we could ask each other, do you get the thing where if you've been sitting for too long, you feel like your leg isn't there, even though it is there. Do you get that? That's the whole, that was the first sentence that was spoken actually. And the other person was like, yes. Oh, thank goodness.

I'm so glad you do too. So this guy's tooth exploded. And that's that's what we're gonna talk about. Did people's teeth once explode? And if so, why? And also, why don't they now, I guess, would be the follow-up question. There are two more cases in this journal article

that follow. There was a woman from Vernon, Pennsylvania in 1830 who had a superior molar explode. There's not a lot of details given about that. That doesn't sound so superior molar explode. There's not a lot of details given about that. Doesn't sound so superior to me. There was a woman in Hemp Hill, Pennsylvania in 1855 that had a superior canine, split in two.

Superior meaning on the upper part of the mouth, top. Top canine. Yeah, gotcha. Which also sounds like I'm complimenting your dog. Yeah. But it's the tooth. Got it. So it split in two after about an hour

or after a bout of intense pain. So basically what we have is one really detailed account and then two pretty brief accounts saying, sometimes if your tooth hurts really bad, it will blow up. And then the author goes on and can I tell you, along with the titles of these scientific journals, the way that people used to write in them is, I love it, it's amazing.

It is not- Oh, it is in MTV. Well, it is way more entertaining. Yeah. And it is not at all in some sort of like easily recognizable structure. Like now a journal article kind of falls into it. I mean, obviously the sections are structured,

but the way that it's discussed, the tone, the language, I mean, there are rules, but there's also just, things we do that we understand. This does not fall into that. It's almost like a philosophical musing on what could have happened that follows in this journal article where the author starts to talk about

what could have happened here. And so first of all, he theorizes that it was a buildup of something called caloric inside the tooth. Caloric meaning caloric? We have no, caloric is not a- Caloric on a noun? Caloric meaning caloric? We have no, caloric is not a noun. Caloric on a noun? Caloric, yes. There is a substance that he believed existed called caloric.

Okay. That I assume since it sounds like calorie would have some sort of energy connection. Some sort of build up of... But we do not have a substance called caloric in our body. Maybe it's some sort of food, some sort of amount of food had made the tooth swell perhaps, a fat tooth. But there was too much caloric and then it exploded. Which is probably not true since there is no such thing as caloric.

So- Well, not after it explodes certainly. At that point it's released into the air. The other option that he proposes is gas because he, and he talks about, like we understand that gas particles expand. And so gas particles expanding inside the tooth would also cause it to explode. Maybe an infection, it's like creating some sort of gas

as an offshoot of that, who knows? Now listen, what you are saying right now is, we're gonna get to that, that does make sense. However, we wouldn't have known that at the time. The idea of gas producing organisms that would cause infection in a tooth. Are you saying at those times I would have been a genius, Sydney?

Yes, just like that. Because of my advanced medical knowledge. You would have been a genius. Amazing. But after these two theoretical, like these are some things, I have thought of these things. Here's my two hypothetical, maybe it's this things.

The rest of the article is the author chastising dentists who will say, because I don't know what's causing your tooth to ache, I will not drill a hole in it. Basically, that is the rest of it, is him saying, there will be people who say, well, your tooth hurts, and I don't know why, but I got this drill, let's try to make a hole, and it will relieve the pressure,

and you will feel better, and your tooth won't explode because of those brave pragmatists who picked up the drill and took action. But there will also be people who are afraid and who are weak. They don't take the big drills. They don't get the big teeth. They won't do it.

And they won't pick up the drill. They'll say, I don't know why your tooth hurts. I don't know. And then they'll say, well, maybe we should just let it take its course and let the tooth explode. If that is what will be, we should allow it to be. Yeah, if you're so smart,

then let your tooth explode, tough guy. And maybe the reason they'll say that is because, you know, it's not that big a deal. It's just a toothache and you just need to bear the pain. And maybe that's because these people have never been in true pain. This, it's a wild, it is a wild. Like the rest of the piece is about this.

Yeah, it's about how like some dentists don't know what it's like to feel pain, I guess. And so they would just say like, deal with it. It's no big deal. And that these people, he compares them to fall staff. Oh, wow. He says that they are courageous until they are put to the test.

Of drilling teeth? Of, no, what he's saying is that if you went into a dentist and you were like, my tooth hurts, and they looked at it and said, I don't know, it looks fine. He is dividing the dentist that would see you into two categories. There would be what he considers like the brave dentists who would say, it looks fine,

but why don't I put a hole in it? Just to make sure. And there would be the not brave dentists who would say, it looks fine, so I don't want to put a hole in it. Let's wait and see what happens. And just to be clear, they're the worst kind of people that exist on earth. According to this author, according to this author, yes,

because he goes on to say the reason that they would do this and not be brave is because basically they don't see your pain as legitimate because they've never actually experienced true pain and they think they're tough, but really they would cry like babies if they had a toothache like this. Actually, he says, the terms he uses,

ball-lustily, if they were in this kind of pain. Actually, he says the term he uses, ball lustily. If they were in this kind of pain. Ball lustily. B-A-W. Oh, yes. B-A-W-L lustily. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Anyway, I don't know why all of this is needed in this journal article.

I read the three accounts of the teeth exploding and then it went on to this. I mean, at the end he's like, and let those who, and these are in quotes, never heard of, quote, saw or quote, believe such cases, quote, possible, just for once in their lives be willing to Born out of darkness into the pure light and usefulness of quote open vision Okay, end of article Wow how it ends?

I don't know what it is about the exploding teeth that made this dentist so angry But his point is too far like people gotta start getting serious about teeth because they're exploding people. This is where we're at, this is where we let it get to. They're exploding. We gotta get serious about teeth. We have to get serious about drilling these teeth. I don't know why they're exploding.

You don't either. Put a hole in them though. Put a hole in it and get control. So anyway, I would really, if you're the sort of person that enjoys reading old scientific articles where they kind of use this language and where they show that they're angry and upset, this article from, like I said,

I think I gave you all the details, it's in the dental cosmos. It's available, a lot of this is available free online, in case you're curious. Yeah, and unless you have too many. The University of Michigan Library has most of the cosmos on it. Unless you have so many dates with sexy people

that you are unable to read them. I think it's very cool. Anyway, so is that the only time in history that people's teeth exploded? Yes. No. Oh. I'm gonna tell you about the other cases, but before we do that,

we gotta go to the billing department. Let's go. Jackie Cation. Hi, and welcome to the maximum fun.org podcast. The Jackie and Laurie show where we talk about stand up comedy and how much we love it and how much it enrages us. We have a lot of experience and a lot of stories and a lot of time on our hands. So check us out. It's one hour a week and we drop it every Wednesday on naxamafund.org. Hello, Podcast Recommendation Service.

Hello there, young man. I'm looking for a new podcast to listen to. Something amusing, perhaps. Oh, what about Beef and Dairy Network? Something surreal and satirical. Well, I would suggest Beef and Dairy Network. Ideally, it would be a spoof industry podcast for the beef and dairy industries. Yes, Beef and Dairy Network.

Maybe it would have brilliant guests such as Josie Long, Heather Ann Campbell, Nick Offerman and the actor Ted Danson. Beef and Dairy Network. Maybe it would have brilliant guests such as Josie Long, Heather Ann Campbell, Nick Offerman and the actor Ted Danson. Beef and Dairy Network. I don't know, I think I'm going to stick to Joe Rogan. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is a multi-award winning comedy podcast and you can find it at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. So you're telling me that Keith has been doing this all the time for no good reason? So I thought this was weird because this article was published and it's really,

it's just these three accounts of teeth exploding with much less conversation as to why and more of the, like I said, shaming dentists who won't drill teeth. Um, but they're all from Pennsylvania, for one. They're all three, which I don't know if the dentist just, it doesn't seem likely that it was the same dentist who collected all three cases because the first one's from 1817 and the last one is from 1855.

It's a family, a multi-generational family of exploding tooth trackers. So I don't, so I thought like is this just something about weird about and to be fair I did not look up these three cities in Pennsylvania to see if they were close to each other. Springfield, Vernon and Hempel. Maybe it was all the same neighborhood. This is something I could have done. I don't know.

But the point is are there other places other than Pennsylvania and maybe other dentists who've observed these teeth exploding? So I found in a book called Pathology and Therapeutics of Dentistry with Miscellaneous Essays on Dental Subjects by J. Phelps Hibbler, DDS, was published in 1874 in St. Louis. And there were more cases,

including one that he personally observed. So I think that gives, that's a little more valuable, right? These aren't hearsay. This isn't like somebody told me. There's one case which he saw himself, and this was a case of a tooth exploding. And basically he goes on,

and I'll use his words to describe it. There was nothing very much different in this woman's constitutional makeup, so far as at least I could discern, in terms of like her teeth seemed like everybody's teeth, right, that she seemed like- Not explosive at all. Yes, like just like the usual teeth I'm used to seeing.

She said, just before the explosion took place, the tooth was aching dreadfully, disturbing the harmonical equanimity of every part of her organism, to the extent that she at moments was laboring under slight aberrations of mind. So she was delirious with pain is the point. She was out of her mind with pain.

All of a sudden the raving pains eased up greatly. Just hearing you say that, I wanna start drilling teeth. Having been walking the floor for several hours, she sat down a moment or two to take some rest. She averred that she had all her senses unimpaired from the moment aching cease. So what he's trying to say is, look, I know she was delirious with pain,

but then she had a moment where she got really lucid. And then all at once without any symptom, other than the previous severe aching, the tooth, a right lower first molar, bursted with a concussion and report that Well Nye knocked her over. So her tooth exploded and she almost fell over. Why did it stop hurting for a second and then explode?

That's wild. It split and shattered at the same moment, having a horrid sensation traversing the eustachian tube, so the tubes that connect the back of your throat up into your middle ear. So she said she was deaf for a while afterwards. Basically it's such a loud explosion that she lost her hearing briefly.

The smell of an exploded tooth, I can't even imagine. The whole thing did not occupy but a moment and the tooth ceased aching at once. I mean, one would hope. So we have, but here's the thing, when I say firsthand account, what he means is, this woman told me about this. So yes.

Nobody witnessed this, other than the patient themself. This is maybe a third hand account, right? I lose track of the hands, but. The patient described it to her dentist, and then her dentist wrote it down. Yeah. So it's a second hand. He is writing down what she told him happened.

Okay. That makes sense. Right? Yes, that makes sense. I mean, I am now recounting it. So this is third hand that you, you the listener are hearing from me. But where did you read it?

You didn't read it? I'm reading his account of it. Okay, good. So we're at fourth, third hand. But if somebody's like, I heard the Wallace thing on this podcast, that'll be fourth hand. That'll be fourth hand.

Right, which I mean, I heard the Wallace thing on this podcast, that'll be fourth-hand. That'll be fourth-hand. Right, which I mean, I am not arguing that I am certain these teeth exploded. I'm also not gonna argue that I'm certain they didn't explode. The only thing you're really arguing is that you're not arguing. And I'm not a dentist. So there are a few more scattered,

in his book that he wrote. You have a couple more from this Dr. Hibler, the dentist. And you can find a couple other scattered accounts here and there up until the 1920s. And then you really don't see anything after there's like scattered accounts of like, I don't know somebody, and it's always the same. Someone's tooth hurt really bad and then it exploded.

And then the pain went away. I had to wonder that if some point, just like overall quality of dentistry was gonna catch up with whatever was causing this problem. So like we would get better at detecting exploding teeth before they exploded maybe, I don't know. Well, there is this last, okay, this is what throws the whole thing into question.

There's this last account that you find, it was a letter that was written from the mother of two young children on the 21st of September, 1965, to the British Dental Journal. And it was basically about something that happened to her kids. And what she said is, and the person reporting this was like,

this is so unusual, this is so strange, I felt like it was important that the readers of our show were aware And what she said is, and the person reporting this was like, this is so unusual, this is so strange, I felt like it was important that the readers of our journal hear this letter. Which it feels like a justification, like listen, it's just so weird I had to share it. So she's writing about her kids and she says, these teeth became loose and fell out quite normally

and didn't appear to be damaged or cracked when I examined them as soon as they fell out. So her kids lost some teeth. Okay. She collected them. Maybe in her underwear drawer. As some parents, maybe, somewhere, just put loose teeth in their underwear drawer.

Maybe somebody does that. The double tooth was placed on the mantle piece, which gets warm, but not excessively so. Several hours later, so this is a tooth that has fallen out of her child's mouth, she has placed it on the mantelpiece, which gets warm, but not excessively so. Several hours later, so this is a tooth that has fallen out of her child's mouth, she has placed it on the mantel. It exploded, sending pieces all over the room. I collected as many pieces as I could find,

but some are still missing. The two single teeth were put on the mantelpiece in a tortoise shell snuff box, and I didn't realize, she opened the box much later and looked, and those two teeth had also split in half. Whoa, that's weird. As if they had exploded inside the snuff box. So what we're saying in this case is that these are teeth

that have already been removed from, well, not removed, they've fallen out of a human mouth, placed on a mantle, and then exploded. That's wild, Sid. And I think she makes note of the fact that it wasn't very hot, so that you're not like, well. But I mean, again, can you imagine a mantle, the fireplace mantle that got so hot

that if you put a tooth on it, it would explode? Yeah, you shouldn't. I don't even know what that is. It shouldn't be, yeah, you can't be like, well, on the other hand, no, it's exploding teeth. It's wild no matter what the circumstance. Right. So what is happening? What could we theorize?

We know caloric isn't real. So we know it's not a buildup of caloric because that's not a thing. There is no substance that we know what that is. What about the gas? You mentioned like there are bacteria that form gas. That's where we get, I mean, when we talk about specifically gas gangrene,

what we're talking about is an infection in the soft tissue that involves some bacteria that do form gas. And so you can actually see the gas on imaging. Like if I take an X-ray, I can see little gas bubbles collecting at the infection site as the tissue's being destroyed by the infection. So that does happen.

And so could there be an infection in those teeth that, and that's why they had the pain, so much gas built up inside the tooth from the infection that the tooth exploded. Is that it? That makes sense to me. Dentists, so I've read a lot of like, pop-sci articles about these occurrences, and a lot of dentists have been interviewed

as to what is their thought on this over time. And a lot of them tend to say the same thing. It's hard to imagine that you could ever build up enough pressure from gas inside a tooth to make a tooth actually explode. Even a diseased tooth is really hard and strong. That's what they think. So they can't, they say that the gas explanation just does not feel plausible. Now I don't think anybody's ever tried to recreate this, like MythBusters style, like make a fake human tooth

and then put gas inside it and then see if they could blow it up from the inside. I don't know, but most people think that it's probably not true. Another option though that might be true is, what about other stuff that's in your mouth? Like maybe even back then we did dental fillings. Oh, maybe it's a-

Having a cavity drilled in a filling place was already something we were doing at this point in history. So is it possible that it had something to do with what the materials we used to make those early fillings out of? So prior to the 1830s when we did Mercury amalgam, there were all kinds of different metals,

tin, lead, silver, alloys, there were lots of different metals that you might have put inside a filling. And so if two different metals were used in a filling or maybe even in two different fillings, you could create like an electrochemical cell in the mouth. Yeah.

The mouth would become, and this is according to, this is fantastic. Andrea Sella, a professor of inorganic chemistry at the University College London says, basically you would be turning your mouth into a low voltage battery. Yikes. So in that case, um, maybe, maybe, if you have these different metals,

maybe you could, uh, have some spontaneous... Reaction, yeah. ...electrolysis, and... especially if, like, the filling didn't completely fill the whole cavity, and there was still a little bit of extra space around the filling for hydrogen to fill in. Is there a note?

Then you could have an explosion there in your mouth. Do we know, is there usually a decay, or sorry, a connection between like decay or bad dental work or like teeth are already in bad shape or cavities or anything like that? So that's the only problem with this whole story. It was all bad all the time. Well, is that we don't have any evidence

that any of the people whose teeth allegedly exploded had any dental fillings in their mouth or had a history of tooth decay otherwise or had like poor dentition at baseline. Which is not as much of a thing anymore. Right. But that is the only explanation that I found, like if you have a weakened tooth

and there's some hydrogen in it, and if it was ignited by, let's say, maybe you had some iron in a filling in your mouth that sparked, or maybe you lit up a cigarette. I don't know. Maybe you bit on a metal utensil. Oh, God. I know, sorry, sorry. But then maybe you could cause an explosion

in a tooth. Yikes. This is so theoretical and almost certainly impossible. And again, it doesn't really give us an answer because you would think that somebody would have written about, like, well, and they already had fillings in their mouth. And nobody ever did, which makes you think that these patients, and they already had fillings in their mouth,

and nobody ever did, which makes you think that these patients probably didn't already have fillings in their mouth. And it certainly doesn't explain why that woman put her kid's teeth on the mantle place and they exploded. But it hasn't, as far as we know, it's been a while since this has happened with any irregularity?

Really, this case from 1965, where the teeth on the mantle place exploded, is the only one that stands out since the 1920s. Everything ended in the 1920s. So at least that we have written down. I'm not saying somewhere someone's tooth hasn't exploded since the 1920s.

If you all have heard anything about that or heard any teeth explode or heard like a friend's teeth exploding, you gotta tell science about that. So we don't know. It seems weird to me, because we've been doing this show long enough, it seems weird to me that more teeth haven't exploded since then. It just seems like a law of large numbers.

Somebody's teeth should have exploded by now. We should have more teeth by now. I don't know, I don't have an answer for you. This is a medical mystery, a dental mystery. Dental mystery. To be exact, that I cannot solve. And I am, to be fair, not well equipped to do so because I am merely a physician.

But just dabbling in the toothlands. Yeah, I mean, I really thought the gas forming bacteria in the teeth, that was really my, as I read about this, I was like, oh, I know what this is, I know what this is. That's what I thought too, does that make you think that I'm smart? Yeah, but see, that's because listen, you are only smart about the things I'm smart about

in medicine, because it's what I've taught you. And my light's the only refraction of yours. And I know nothing about teeth. So when the dentist interviewed said, there's no way that it would be strong enough to splote a tooth, I would trust that they're right and I'm wrong. Hey, thank you so much for listening to our podcast.

We hope you've enjoyed yourself, and we hope that none of your T-fers have exploded for no reason at all, pretty much. Thanks to the tax payers for use of their song, Medicines is the intro now to our program. Hey, we got a lot of, Sid and I were looking at it a few days ago. We got a lot of great Sawbones merchandise

available on the website, McElroyMerch.com. And you can find T-shirts. We have a challenge coin for our 10 year anniversary. nice available on the website, McElroyMerch.com. You can find t-shirts. We have a challenge coin for our 10 year anniversary. A lot of fun stuff on there that you can go check out. If there's some merch thing, some shirt or whatever that you'd like that's related to Sawbones, give us a shout, sawbones at maximumfun.org.

Also, we never mentioned it, but the Sawbones book is available in paperback and hardback. The paperback has new stuff about COVID and it's a really good book. Sydney's Brother Taylor illustrated it. It's great. That's going to do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McElroy. I'm Sydney McElroy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. All right! Maximum Fun, a workaround network of artist-owned shows, supported directly by you.