Editing Teething (section)

==History==
[[File:Teething Ring.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Early twentieth century teething ring and pacifier.]]
Teething used to be considered (wrongly) a cause of death, as many children died in the first years of life, at the same time as teething occurs. "The tendency in the past to attribute serious disease to teething was so prevalent that in 1842 teething was the registered cause of death in 4.8% of all infants who died in London under the age of 1 year and 7.3% of those between the ages of 1 to 3 years according to the Registrar General's report."<ref name="autogenerated234" />

Ironically, while teething is a natural process which creates little more than discomfort, some methods for relieving teething pain have caused serious harm and even death. Old remedies for teething include "blistering, bleeding, placing leeches on the gums, and applying cautery to the back of the head".<ref name="autogenerated1996">{{cite journal | doi = 10.1016/S0140-6736(96)05105-7 | title = The lancet and the gum-lancet: 400 years of teething babies | year = 1996 | last1 = Dally | first1 = Ann | s2cid = 44988884 | journal = The Lancet | volume = 348 | issue = 9043 | pages = 1710–1 | pmid=8973438}}</ref> In the sixteenth century the French surgeon [[Ambroise Paré]] introduced the lancing of gums using a [[Lancet (surgery)|lancet]], in the belief that teeth were failing to emerge from the gums due to lack of a pathway, and that this failure was a cause of death. This belief and practice persisted for centuries, with some exceptions, until towards the end of the nineteenth century lancing became increasingly controversial and was then abandoned, although as late as 1938 an Anglo-American dental textbook advised in favour of lancing, and described the procedure.<ref name="autogenerated1996"/> In the first half of the twentieth century, teething powders in the English-speaking world often contained [[calomel]], a form of mercury. It was removed from most powders in 1954 when it was shown to cause "pink disease" ([[acrodynia]]), a form of [[mercury poisoning]].<ref>{{cite journal | doi = 10.1093/shm/10.2.291 | title = The Rise and Fall of Pink Disease | year = 1997 | last1 = Dally | first1 = A. | journal = Social History of Medicine | volume = 10 | issue = 2 | pages = 291–304 | pmid = 11619497}}</ref>

Teething toys have a long history. In England in the 17th–19th centuries, a ''coral'' meant a teething toy made of coral, ivory, or bone, often mounted in silver as the handle of a rattle.<ref>''[[OED]]''; [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roco/hod_47.70.htm Examples from the Metropolitan]</ref> A museum curator has suggested that these substances were used as [[sympathetic magic]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/collections/childcare/rattle/index.html |title=Rattles |publisher=Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood |access-date=December 18, 2011}}</ref> and that the animal bone could symbolize animal strength to help the child cope with pain.