History of bees wax in dentistry

Abstract

Wax is the oldest dental material still in use today. Chemically, wax is an ester containing a long-chain alcohol and a long-chain fatty acid. Today, dental waxes are a mixture of animal, vegetable, and mineral origin, as well as dyes, oils, fats, gums, and resins; the later components change the wax’s physical properties such as melting range, fluidity, ductility, thermal expansion or contraction, and distortion with time. Each component is added to attain the physical properties desirable for a particular application. Natural waxes like carnauba wax are produced from plants; bees make beeswax, while paraffin is derived from minerals.