This chapter explores oral health as a component of overall health and well-being in older adults. The primary focus is on older adults who live independently and in long-term care settings. Common oral diseases among this population include dental caries, periodontal disease, and oropharyngeal cancers. Discussion of each includes common signs and symptoms, etiology of disease, established risk factors, health disparities, and approaches to disease prevention and treatment. Oral hygiene is particularly important for oral disease prevention, but may present unique challenges for older adults. Oral hygiene strategies are discussed in the context of geriatric care. In addition, the authors present a framework for integrating oral health into primary care practice to improve outcomes for older adults.

This chapter addresses facial surgery and prosthesis.The early modern period saw the development of medical procedures aimed as much at the augmentation and transformation of the face as at its restoration to ‘normality’. These advanced procedures brought into question the morality of changing one’s appearance. These issues were heightened in discussions of the Tagliacotian rhinoplasty. Promising to graft a new nose on to the faces of men afflicted by syphilis, this operation potentially, and controversially, disguised the results of sexual licentiousness. Moreover, satirists suggested not only that the graft might be taken from another person’s flesh, but that the grafted part might retain a sympathetic connection to its original ‘owner’. The nature of the connection (or lack thereof) between a person’s flesh and their ‘true’ identity was foremost in such discussions. Hester Pulter’s poem on the subject is a witty, sharply satirical admonition against sexual incontinence. Anticipating later works by Butler and Addison, it demonstrates how rhinoplasty became a vehicle for voicing larger concerns about embodiment, sociability, and morality.