I have been crowned!

Well, the last week or so has been a whirlwind of activity, what with the holidays spontaneously arriving and all. In the past week or so I've gotten a crown, done facepainting AND videography for the Kara Nomadica show, broken a crown, seen Tenacious D live in concert, spent time with my family for Thanksgiving, attended an awesome Hafla, and gotten a second crown. Hopefully this one won't break.

I feel like I'm spending far too much time at the dentist. But I'm celebrating having dental insurance for the first time in, uh...five years? So I'm a little behind in my dental health. Having all that time in the chair with my mouth open gave me time to think up some funny comparisons between dental 'crowns' and SCA 'Crowns'.


Dental crowns are supposedly permanent. SCA Crowns change every 6-8 months. When you first receive a dental crown, it may feel weird for a few days until you get used to it. When you first receive an SCA Crown, it may take a few months before the weirdness subsides. A dental crown becomes physically part of you forever. An SCA Crown becomes psychologically part of you forever.

After receiving a dental crown, you may experience some speech impairment for a short period of time. After receiving an SCA Crown, you may experience chronic speech impairment for a much longer period of time.(I'm not saying that Crowns can't be eloquent. But that they cannot always say what is really on their minds)

Dental crowns are worn on the inside. SCA crowns are worn on the outside. Coincidently, both types of crowns can be made of precious metal.


Yeah, the things I think of to distract myself are pretty darn weird. But then it made me want to find information about medieval dentistry! And lo, the internet speweth forth many a source for such knowledge:

Medieval and Renaissance Dental Hygiene has many recipies and remedies with thoughtful commentary by the author, who has personally tried most of them. Braver than I would be, with some of those ingredients...... mmmmm........ charcoal....

The American Dental Association has a few pages of dental history on their website. Erroneously thinking that crowns were a somewhat 'modern' invention, I'm shocked to find out that the Etruscans were doings crowns AND bridgework almost 2000 years ago. More research into this brought me to The Dental HiWay's History page, with it's drop-down menu of more dental history than you can shake a willow stick at. Only seven of the selections are pre 1600ad, but what is there, is quite informative. Another good history page can be found at Idakerala.org, where the subjects are broken up into an outline form.

I've also found that the patron Saint of dentists is Saint Apollonia. She got her job as a saint because, during an uprising against Christians in Alexandria, she had all of her teeth smashed out while she was being tortured. Rather than speak against her own religion (and thus save her own life) she threw herself into a pyre.

I might have done that, too if I had just had all my teeth smashed out. More out of vanity than for faith, though. Maybe she didn't know that Etruscan bridgework was available...