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# There's something stuck between my teeth and I can't get it out
- URL: https://www.thefrictionlog.com/00270/
- Published: 2026-10-12T15:06:06.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T16:22:58.000Z
- Description: Filed: before writing · Solved: 1819 · dental floss · by Levi Spear Parmly, dentist
- Author: The Clerk
- Tags: Solved, #solved 1819

*Beef from Sunday's roast. It's Wednesday.* — Dinner guest, 1815

Fossil teeth almost 2 million years old already have grooves worn by toothpicks, which is a long time to have something stuck. In 1819 a dentist, Levi Spear Parmly, told readers to pass waxed silk thread between their teeth. Johnson & Johnson later made floss from the leftover silk it bought for surgical stitches, and switched to nylon when World War II took the silk.

**Noted**: in 2016 flossing quietly dropped out of the federal dietary guidelines. Dentists did not drop it.

### The full file

The first patent anybody got for floss went to Asahel Shurtleff of Boston in 1874: a pocket gadget that carried the silk thread and cut it, about like the little pack in your drawer. His firm, Codman & Shurtleff, started selling unwaxed silk floss in 1882\. That's 63 years after the dentist told everybody to use it. People don't hurry. Johnson & Johnson took the company in, in 1964.

Floss has had other uses. In 1994 a 34-year-old named Robert Shepard climbed out of a jail in South Charleston, West Virginia, on a rope he'd braided from mint waxed floss. Seven packs, braided as thick as a phone cord, up an 18-foot wall. He was loose about five weeks. Say what you want about the man. He flossed.

**Relates to** [No. 00100](https://www.thefrictionlog.com/00100/).