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2nd. Edition

Introduction

Bad breath is a problem that traverses history, culture, race and sex. Writings on oral malodor date back to Greek and Roman times (see, for example Geist, 1957; Spouge, 1964; Mandel, 1988; Prinz, 1930). Jewish liturgical teachings, dating back almost two millenia, state that a man who marries a woman, and subsequently discovers that she has bad breath, can summarily divorce her without fulfilling the terms of the marriage contract (ketuba). Islamic theology stresses the importance of the Siwak (a special stick for cleaning of the mouth), including its use during the fast of Ramadan to prevent bad breath. The prophet Muhamed is said to have to expelled a man who had previously eaten garlic from the mosque (S. Orenbuch; I. Natour; personal communications).
Interestingly, the only previous English-language treatise on bad breath was written in the last century (Howe, 1898). The present book, being the first multi- authored text to focus on this problem, is intended to reflect the state-of-the-art, as expressed by world leaders in this field. Clearly, this is an area in which public interest still outstrips scientific endeavor. We can only hope that in coming years a growing cadre of talented scientists will apply their abilities in this direction.
Contrary to some folk beliefs, bad breath usually originates in the mouth itself and is generally amenable to treatment.
How unfortunate, then that so many people remain afflicted with this condition, and are often unaware that they even suffer from it. I recall of the story of a man who, in his youth, was in love with a pretty young lady, but because of her oral malodor, ended up marrying another. Thirty years later, after hearing a lecture on the subject of bad breath, he confided that had he heard the lecture as a bachelor, he might have wound up marrying his first love.
Few human characteristics remain as hard to detect in oneself as bad breath. Should we want to hear how we sound, we can play back an audio recording. If we wish to see how we look, talk and act, we can watch ourselves on video. People appear to be unaware of their own breath, yet are able to detect it in others. Early reviewers (see, for example, Spouge, 1964) blamed the inability to smell our own breath on adaptation (i.e., that one's sense of smell is dulled by continuous exposure to one's own odor). In a recent study, people were asked to score the level of malodor emanating from their mouth, licked wrist and expectorated saliva (Cherniak et al., 1993). The results suggest that preconceived notions of how much bad breath one thinks one should have has a major confounding effect on subsequent scoring of self measurements.
Our reluctance to notify even those close to us that they suffer from this condition serves to further exacerbate the situation.
Thus many people suffer unnecessarily from bad breath throughout their lives, without being remotely aware of it.