牙刷是谁发明的？
Who Made That Toothbrush?

“I don’t have any of those toothbrushes that went to the moon,” says Dr. Ben Swanson, former president of the American Academy of the History of Dentistry. He was speaking from his basement, where he stores his trove of 40,000 artifacts related to dental history. Swanson once dreamed of owning every kind of toothbrush in existence, but ended up stockpiling only a few hundred. “I had to give up because there were so many of them,” he says. In fact, it would be nearly impossible to collect every specimen; the toothbrush is one of the most reinvented of human objects, with thousands of patents on file.

“我可没有什么登上过月球的牙刷，”美国牙医历史学会前主席本·斯万森博士(Dr. Ben Swanson)说。他说的是自己的地下室，里面的宝藏是4万多件和牙医历史有关的手工制品。斯万森曾经梦想过遍藏世界上所有种类的牙刷，但最终还是只存了几百种。“实在太多了，我不得不放弃，”他说。事实上，要想收齐所有品种几乎是不可能的。牙刷是被人类改进次数最多的物品之一，目前有成千上万的专利登记在册。

The story starts in China during the Middle Ages, when people began grooming their teeth with animal bristles. Legend has it that centuries later, William Addis, generally recognized as the first to patent the toothbrush, served time in Newgate prison in London, where he whittled down a bone and stuck it full of bristles.

牙刷的故事始于中世纪的中国，当时人们开始用动物的鬃毛擦亮牙齿；而它的传奇则发生在几个世纪之后，人们普遍认为威廉姆·阿迪斯(William Addis)是第一个拥有发明牙刷专利的人，在伦敦的纽盖特监狱服刑期间，他截短一块骨头，在上面贴满鬃毛当做牙刷。

Even when toothbrushes migrated to the corner store, many people preferred to rub their teeth with a rag. As late as the 1920s, “many Americans did not brush their teeth,” Swanson says. One reason is that those early toothbrushes could tear up your mouth — the tip of a boar bristle, under a microscope, resembles a spear. By the 1940s, synthetics offered a solution. One ad trumpeted: “For years, only hog bristle made fine tooth brushes. Then Science made round-end Prolon” — its soft bristles were designed to preserve the gums.

甚至当牙刷走入社区商店之后，许多人还是宁愿用破布来擦牙齿。直至20世纪20年代末，“很多美国人还是不刷牙，”斯万森说。原因之一是，早期的牙刷会把嘴弄破——在显微镜下，牙刷上猪鬃的尖端就像长矛一样。到了20世纪40年代，合成纤维提供了解决方案。一则广告吹嘘：“多年来，精美的牙刷只用猪鬃制作。之后科学造出了圆头纤维刷毛”——设计这种柔软的刷毛是用来保护牙龈的。

The advent of plastics also meant that toothbrushes could take any shape imaginable. And so brushes jingled and hummed tunes. They arrived on the drugstore shelf enshrined in hermetic tubes. They boasted “anti-soggy” bristles.

塑料工艺的发展也意味着牙刷可以被制造成任何形状。刷毛还可以发出各种音乐般的声音。它们被装在密封管子里，供奉在杂货店的架子上。声称自己是“反对沉闷”的牙刷。

Asked to pick a favorite toothbrush from his collection, Swanson says he’s fond of a model that cleans both sides of the teeth at once. “You remember the Reach toothbrush with the angled head?” he says. “One year they came out with a brush that had two heads.” But the design failed to catch on. In the world of toothbrushes, apparently, two heads are not always better than one.

我们请斯万森在收藏中选一款自己最心爱的牙刷，他表示自己最喜欢一把能一次同时清洁牙齿两侧的牙刷。“你记得刷头有一定角度倾斜的Reach牌牙刷吗？”他说，“有一年它们推出了一款有两个刷头的牙刷。”但是这个设计没能流行起来。显然，在牙刷的世界里，两个头未必比一个头好。

BRUSH HEAD

刷牙死党

Vermin Supreme, a performance artist, has run for president many times; he espouses “mandatory-toothbrushing laws.”

维蒙·修普利姆(Vermin Supreme)是一位行为艺术家，曾多次竞选总统，他主张制定“强制刷牙法”。

You often carry a giant toothbrush to scrub away the decay that clings to public monuments. I’ve scrubbed many, many landmarks. I scrubbed the Kremlin back in ’98. We had a mandatory-toothbrushing parade; we had the text of the mandatory-toothbrush law translated into Russian. And we had like 30 Russians; we had musicians; we had the giant toothbrushes. The police came and told us to stop, and we stopped. It was a beautiful thing.

你经常带着一把大牙刷去擦除公共纪念建筑表面上附着的污垢。 我擦洗了很多很多地标建筑。1998年，我还去擦过克里姆林宫。我们发起了强制刷牙大游行；我们把强制刷牙法案的文本翻译成了俄文。和我们一起的有大概30来个俄国人；我们请了乐手；我们有大牙刷。后来警察来制止我们，我们就停下了。那是一件很美好的事。

So what would these mandatory-toothbrushing laws involve? Secret dental police. Government-issued toothpaste containing an addictive yet harmless substance. Computer-dental-chip implants to keep track of you and your children for your protection. For too long this nation has been suffering a great moral and oral decay.

强制刷牙法案都说了写什么？ 秘密牙科警察。政府下发的牙膏里含有无害的上瘾物质。给人植入电脑牙科芯片，用来跟踪你和孩子们，保护你们。这个国家的道德与口腔卫生都已堕落得太久。

Over the last 25 years, you’ve pushed lots of politicians to answer tough questions about oral hygiene. That’s right. When I asked Bob Dole if he supported mandatory-toothbrushing laws, his response was, “As long as it’s locally controlled.”

在过去25年里，你就口腔卫生向很多政治家提出严厉的质问。 是的，我问鲍勃·杜尔(Bob Dole)支持不支持强制刷牙法，他的回答是：“只要它是由地方控制的。”

本文最初发表于2013年2月17日。

翻译：董楠