Eh. Predecessors to toothpaste have been around for _7000 years_. At _least_.
> Since 5000 BC, the Egyptians made a tooth powder, which consisted of powdered ashes of ox hooves, myrrh, powdered and burnt eggshells, and pumice.
(Obviously, there have been improvements since.)
But seriously, preventative medicine, in _some_ form, has been around for a while. It mostly didn't work very well or at all, but the idea of doing stuff to avoid becoming sick/getting sicker isn't new.
Yeah but it was all bullshit as you admitted. The idea of actually preventing things via actual medicine and hence “preventative medicine” is new. Whatever you’re describing is not that.
Your entire comment is essentially “people used to pray and have rituals to stop bad things from happening” and you equaled it to preventative medicine. Do you understand how retarded you sound?
Old forms of toothpaste and tooth powder and similar did actually work, to some extent. See the one described above; it’s basically an abrasive. Of course it worked. Toothpaste only _really_ advanced far past that in the 1950s with fluoridation.
Various other things worked to some extent. The key difference is that no-one was really trying to _demonstrate_ that they worked; that really only came with evidence-based medicine in the late 19th century.
> Since 5000 BC, the Egyptians made a tooth powder, which consisted of powdered ashes of ox hooves, myrrh, powdered and burnt eggshells, and pumice.
(Obviously, there have been improvements since.)
But seriously, preventative medicine, in _some_ form, has been around for a while. It mostly didn't work very well or at all, but the idea of doing stuff to avoid becoming sick/getting sicker isn't new.