Cavities in teeth have been filled since earliest times with a variety of materials: stone chips, turpentine resin, gum, metals. Arculanus (Giovanni d'Arcoli) recommended gold-leaf fillings in 1484. The renowned physician Ambroise Paré used lead or cork; in the 1700s, Pierre Fauchard, the father of modern dentistry, favored tin foil or lead cylinders; and Philip Pfaff, dentist to Frederick the Great of Prussia, used gold foil. Gold leaf as a filling became popular in the United States in the early nineteenth century; Marcus Bull of Hartford, Connecticut, began producing beaten gold for dental use in 1812 which was replaced in 1853 in the United States and England by sponge gold. This was followed by cohesive, or adhesive, gold introduced by American dentist Robert A. Arthur in 1855 and, by 1847, gutta percha was being used.

The invention of the power-driven dental drill led to increased demand for fillings and so...