Exploding Teeth: Your New Phobia Unlocked

In this absolutely chaotic slice of history, we dive into one of the strangest—and most painful—medical mysteries ever recorded: exploding teeth. Yes. Actual human teeth. Exploding. Inside people’s mouths. Set in the early-to-mid 1800s, this episode centers around several documented cases—most famously that of Reverend D.A. Spriggs—whose sudden, violent dental pain didn’t just throb… it detonated. Victims reported intense pressure, unbearable agony, and then—BANG—teeth cracking, shattering, or even bursting apart with an audible pop.

We follow the timeline of these bizarre incidents, focusing on personal accounts that read more like horror fiction than medical documentation. People described flashes of light, gunshot-like sounds, and immediate relief after the explosion—as if their mouth just rage-quit.

So what the hell was happening?

We break down the leading theories:

•  Early dental fillings made from unstable metals (hello, 1800s chaos chemistry) 
•  Hydrogen gas buildup inside decaying teeth (yes, your mouth potentially becoming a tiny bomb) 
•  Galvanic reactions—basically a battery forming in your mouth because of mixed metals 

…and why none of these explanations fully hold up under scrutiny.

Because here’s the thing: even modern dentistry can’t fully explain how a tooth could generate enough internal pressure to literally explode.

So was this a weird cluster of misdiagnosed dental abscesses? A case of experimental dentistry gone wrong? Or something even stranger—something we just don’t understand anymore?

Either way, this episode will make you:

•  Fear toothaches on a whole new level 
•  Deeply appreciate modern dentistry 
•  And maybe… never ignore mouth pain again 

Because in the 1800s, a toothache wasn’t just annoying.

It might have been a ticking time bomb.

SOURCES

Primary Source

"Explosion of Teeth With Audible Report"

W.H. Atkinson. The Dental Cosmos, Vol. 2, January 1861. University of Michigan / Hathi Trust digital archive.

33:78">https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dencos/acf8385.0002.001/333:78

Note: The archive page is image-based and requires institutional access. The Atkinson quotes used in this episode are reproduced via the secondary sources below, both of which cite this original directly.

Secondary Sources

"The gruesome and mysterious case of exploding teeth"

BBC Future, 1 March 2016. Includes expert commentary from Hugh Devlin (Professor of Restorative Dentistry, University of Manchester) and Andrea Sella (Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, UCL).

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160301-the-gruesome-and-mysterious-case-of-exploding-teeth

Note: This URL was blocked from direct fetch during production. Content confirmed via the Amusing Planet piece below, which reproduces both expert quotes and cites BBC Future as source.

"From the archive: The mysterious case of 'exploding teeth'"

British Dental Journal, vol. 219, pp. 376–377. Published 23 October 2015.

https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2015.809

Reproduces BDJ correspondence originally published 1965–1966: Cyril Tomes (21 Sept 1965), B. Eady (5 Oct 1965), Basil G. Bibby / University of Pennsylvania (Dec 1965), Louis I. Grossman / University of Pennsylvania (Feb 1966). The Grossman letter quotes directly from J. Phelps Hibler's 1874 book. Directly fetched and verified.

"The Case of The Exploding Teeth"

Amusing Planet, 21 February 2023.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2023/02/the-case-of-exploding-teeth.html

Reproduces the full Atkinson quote from The Dental Cosmos, summarizes the Hibler and BDJ cases, and includes the Devlin and Sella quotes from BBC Future. Directly fetched and verified. Used as the primary route to Atkinson's text.

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