Chapter 5

Plague, Perfume, and How Nobody Brushed Their Teeth

Lavish & Lethal: The Golden Age of Scent-Masking

The Renaissance—a grand era of rebirth, discovery, and the collective decision to drown in perfume rather than acknowledge the mouth rot festering behind every social interaction. They called it progress. Scholars penned sonnets, painters immortalized visions of beauty, and behind it all, the reek of fermented wine and rotting molars wafted through gilded halls.

It was the age of excess and denial. The wealthy festooned themselves in lace and satin while their mouths festered with decay hidden behind layers of rose water and citrus oil. Aristocrats swore by elaborate potions—jars of ambergris mixed with lavender and mint, desperate to obliterate their halitosis with a mask of fleeting fragrance. The reality, however, was that their mouths remained swamps of rot, and the scent only mingled to form something that smelled like a botanical garden left to die in a bog.

Perfume makers grew wealthy peddling concoctions that promised to “purify the breath” and “restore oral vigor.” One popular formula called “The Duke’s Delight” contained crushed violets, boiled brandy, and the ground bones of small animals. Nobles gargled this fetid slurry with religious fervor, convinced that its putrid sweetness signaled success. The stench of desperation hung as heavy as the scent itself.

The elite attended lavish feasts, eating whole roasted swans stuffed with apples and onions, their breath mingling with garlic and cheese until it could only be described as a violent floral nightmare. Courtiers whispered conspiracies through teeth rotted from sugared plums and honey cakes, pretending not to notice when their partner turned pale mid-sentence. Perfumed scarves became indispensable, held to the face at the slightest provocation of breathy insult.

Majestic Mouth Rot: The Stench of Power

It didn’t matter if you were a king or a commoner—decay doesn’t discriminate. Royals, with their elaborate banquets and refusal to ever consume water like a sensible human, developed breath that could peel paint off the palace walls. Queen Isabella of Castile was infamous for her aversion to bathing, but it was her sour, wine-soaked breath that drove ambassadors to their knees. Rumors spread that her mouth could knock out a horse at twenty paces.

King Henry VIII was perhaps the most notorious offender. His gargantuan feasts and fondness for roasted boar marinated in garlic wine left his breath smelling like a battlefield in the aftermath of a butcher’s riot. Courtiers learned to stand precisely two steps behind him at all times, lest they be caught in the death radius. His physicians recommended rinsing with vinegar and cloves, but the king preferred to simply bellow orders while chewing venison jerky, practically melting the faces of his advisors.

In Italy, the Medicis took a different approach, employing perfumed mouthwash made from elderflower and saffron. It didn’t work, but at least it gave the illusion of sophistication, like sprinkling cinnamon on a compost heap. The wealthy, convinced that decay was merely a cosmetic problem, invested fortunes into alchemy and illusion, ignoring the fundamental problem of rot burrowing deep into their gums.

Potion Peddlers: Conning with Fake Cures

When you’re desperate enough, even the most absurd solution seems reasonable. Alchemists preyed on this vulnerability, selling miracle elixirs that promised to make the mouth smell like heaven. One infamous charlatan, Master Lorenzo the Luminous, claimed his potion, “Celestial Exhale,” could erase the stench of sin from even the most decadent tongue. It was nothing more than fermented honey and crushed myrtle leaves—a syrup so foul that it practically weaponized one’s breath.

Then came “Golden Gale”, a concoction made from rosemary, vinegar, and the ashes of burnt parchment, sold at exorbitant prices to aristocrats eager to avoid social disgrace. The potion turned the mouth into a smoldering pit of acidic regret, but no one dared complain publicly for fear of appearing uncouth.

The truly desperate resorted to amber beads soaked in cinnamon oil, chewed like candy despite the risk of jaw-lock and gum inflammation. Those who survived the ritual claimed it left their mouths feeling numb and vaguely wooden, but still, the stink lingered like a bad reputation.

Through it all, the plague of breath endured—proof that even the Renaissance, with all its enlightened thought and artistic genius, couldn’t overcome the most basic human failing: rotting from the inside out.

Mortimer Graves’ Commentary:

You’d think that in an era of discovery, someone would discover the simple concept of brushing one’s teeth. Instead, they masked the problem, dressed it up, and paraded it through marble halls, convinced that perfuming death would somehow make it tolerable. It didn’t. They were just rotting in more elaborate costumes.

The Renaissance gave us masterpieces, scientific breakthroughs, and some of the most floral, horrifying breath imaginable. Progress doesn’t mean we fixed the problem—it just means we got better at ignoring it. Humanity’s tragic flaw isn’t just the stink—it’s the arrogance to believe we can simply smother it with roses and call it purity.

Scientific Revolution: The Tooth Puller’s Nightmare

The Renaissance was a time of rebirth—art, science, philosophy. But nobody told the average human mouth. Dental care was still an afterthought, left to the butchers and barbers who hacked and yanked at rotten teeth with the same finesse they used to shave a pig. The barber-surgeons became reluctant dental pioneers, equal parts healer and sadist, wielding rusty pliers like weapons of divine punishment.

Tooth pulling was a public spectacle. Town squares became theaters of pain, where the afflicted gathered to have their diseased molars ripped from their skulls while the crowd cheered like they were watching a gladiatorial match. The more blood, the better—it meant the rot was gone. In theory.

One famed tooth-puller, known only as “Bloody Bert,” specialized in removing entire sets of teeth in one sitting. His rationale was simple: No teeth, no rot. The man was a visionary in the same way that arsonists are urban planners. He claimed that once the mouth was empty, the soul could breathe freely without the stink of sin. Customers left with swollen jaws and permanent disfigurement, but at least they weren’t dying from mouth rot-induced sepsis.

Other barber-surgeons tried more refined methods, like using heated iron rods to cauterize infected gums. The result was charred flesh that smelled like pork left to rot in the sun, but the patients seemed grateful just to survive the ordeal. The public’s understanding of dental health was simplistic at best—if it hurt, cut it out. If it stank, burn it off.

When We Realized Mouths Were Filth Factories

It took the combined efforts of scholars and alchemists to finally admit the obvious: Human mouths were revolting pits of bacterial warfare. The scientific minds of the Renaissance—always poking, prodding, and dissecting—finally turned their attention to oral decay. What they discovered was enough to make a man swear off eating entirely.

The mouth, it turned out, was a putrid battleground, teeming with invisible creatures feeding on the remnants of last night’s swan stew. Alchemists, in their quest for purity, concocted experimental mouth washes made of vinegar, urine, and sage, hoping to cleanse the soul through oral suffering. Predictably, the result was burned tongues and stinging regret, but at least they were trying.

The realization that mouths were inherently foul, dangerous places led to the birth of rudimentary dental hygiene practices. Some daring souls even attempted to scrape their tongues with sharpened spoons, convinced that peeling off the upper layer would reveal freshness beneath. It didn’t. It just exposed raw tissue that bled and blistered, and the resulting infections often proved fatal.

Still, pamphlets began to circulate, advising people to rinse their mouths with diluted wine or chew on mint leaves after meals. The advice was inconsistent—some claimed that spitting three times while facing east would banish bad breath, while others advocated for gnawing on burnt bones to purify the gums. Nobody knew what they were doing, but at least they were pretending to care.

Reckless Remedies: Misguided Stabs at Salvation

Desperation drives innovation, but it also breeds insanity. Tooth powders became the rage, crafted from crushed oyster shells, dried pig snout, and ground nutmeg. People rubbed these powders into their gums, grinding away at the rot with the fervor of a zealot exorcising demons. Some powders contained arsenic, promising to kill the stink at its source—along with the user. It wasn’t long before the phrase “to die with a fresh mouth” became an ironic epitaph.

Elixirs claiming to cure oral rot were brewed from bull bile and crushed anise seeds, heated to boiling and then left to ferment for weeks. Drinking it was less a remedy and more of a punishment for existing. Those who managed to keep it down found that their mouths now smelled like boiled garbage mixed with licorice. Others weren’t so lucky—succumbing to gastrointestinal catastrophes that left them praying for a quick death.

A particularly audacious alchemist named Tiberius Malfetto insisted that liquefied mercury mixed with gooseberry juice would not only eliminate bad breath but purify the soul. Half his clients died, the other half lost most of their teeth, but Malfetto remained convinced of his genius, claiming that only the weak succumbed to progress.

As Renaissance science blossomed, the fundamental truth remained: People didn’t know what the hell they were doing. They just knew they were tired of smelling like death, and if it took a few dozen deaths to find the answer, so be it. Progress through casualties—a timeless human tradition.

Mortimer Graves’ Commentary:

People often say the Renaissance was the birth of reason. Sure, if you call hacking out teeth with pliers and gargling piss-soaked herbs reasonable. They didn’t understand how mouths worked, so they tried everything, and I mean everything. The real revelation was that no matter how smart you think you are, decay doesn’t care. You can drench yourself in perfume or pour vinegar down your throat, but rot is inevitable.

That’s the lesson nobody wanted to hear. They wanted progress without discomfort, but reality doesn’t play that game. If you want to fight rot, you have to actually understand it—and that’s what terrified them. So they drowned their mouths in concoctions and prayed that their choked, dying breath wouldn’t betray them in polite company.

Cultural Reckoning: Breath as Social Currency

The Renaissance was a period of contradiction: opulence layered over rot, wisdom drenched in ignorance, and mouths that stank like open graves despite being surrounded by gilded decadence. The wealthy flaunted their fortunes with extravagant feasts and jeweled goblets of honeyed wine—never stopping to wonder why their mouths smelled like a bloated corpse in a lavender bath.

The elite maintained the illusion of refinement by drowning their putrid breath in perfumed wines and candied fruits. King Francis I of France allegedly demanded his courtiers chew sugar-coated cinnamon sticks before addressing him, but the effect was just sweetened rot, like a garbage heap dipped in honey. Aristocrats competed for the most extravagant breath remedies, while their servants gagged discreetly behind their lace cuffs.

In royal courts, bad breath became a status symbol. Only those wealthy enough to afford the worst-smelling delicacies—fermented fish, pickled garlic, and roasted swan—could carry such an odorous aura of superiority. To stink was to reign supreme. Peasants, with their plain diets and cleaner mouths, were deemed socially inferior, unworthy of sharing space with the decayed nobility.

Despite the pomp and ceremony, everyone knew the truth: Rot didn’t care about class. King or commoner, your mouth was a graveyard for whatever half-chewed monstrosity you last crammed into it. Realizing this truth, the working class began to take pride in their comparative freshness. Bread and cheese didn’t stink nearly as bad as foie gras and venison drowned in mustard sauce.

Noble Breath Brawls: Duelists Who Killed With Breath

Swordplay wasn’t the only way to assert dominance among Renaissance nobles. Sometimes it was quicker to just breathe on your rival and watch him wilt. Breath duels became a bizarre phenomenon, where feuding aristocrats squared off not with rapiers but with their own noxious exhalations.

These duels followed strict rules: Both men would consume a meal prepared specifically to maximize oral offensiveness—a stew of onions, eel, and fermented cabbage—before stepping into the ring. Spectators gathered to watch the contestants lean in and breathe murderously into each other’s faces, hoping to force a gag or faint.

The most notorious breath duelist of the age was Count Rinaldo Malatesta, known as The Reeking Reaper. His secret weapon was a concoction of rotten figs and clove oil, chewed into a paste and held in his mouth until the fateful moment. He defeated dozens of challengers with his fermented firestorm, earning a reputation as both a skilled fighter and a walking mouth plague.

These duels rarely ended in death—more often in public humiliation, as one combatant would collapse, hacking and retching into his own velvet sleeve. It was less about honor and more about proving your olfactory superiority, a twisted point of pride in an already absurd social structure.

Mortimer Graves’ Commentary:

There’s something almost endearing about how the Renaissance elites convinced themselves that their own stink was somehow noble and refined. Wealth didn’t just buy luxury—it bought the right to smell like decomposing roadkill and still be admired. And when challenged, they didn’t back down. They doubled down, crafting their own pungent battlefields of rotten breath and decayed pride.

Breath as power, stink as status—it’s the most human thing imaginable. Instead of fixing the problem, they glamorized it, convinced that if they just wrapped their rotting selves in enough silk and satin, nobody would notice the foulness creeping from their lips. It was tragic and hilarious all at once—refinement on the outside, corruption at the core.

If there’s any lesson to take from the Renaissance, it’s this: Humanity will always find a way to turn even its most disgusting traits into a badge of honor. We didn’t just survive the rot—we made it our own, called it sophistication, and dared anyone to say otherwise.