Seems like he knows what he's doing. (library of congress)
No one likes going to the dentist but compared to the dark ages of plaque possess, the mouth magicians of today are godsends. Sure, you might feel some mild discomfort. Maybe even a few seconds worth of what resembles pain at your next appointment. However, “pales in comparison” doesn’t begin to describe the difference between dentists today and say, 80 years ago. Professor Joanna Bourke once wrote, “Agonizing toothache, horrifying extractions, and barbaric tools have cast a large shadow over our dental past.” Honestly, that barely begins to describe the horror the first “dentists'' inflicted. This article will make you cherish your own dentist and the year you were born.
Appreciate Your Dentist
The dentists of Victorian England or the Old West might as well have been using machetes when measured against the space-aged technology of today. Back then purveyors of oral care were considered skilled laborers like a carpenter rather than highly trained doctors. Conditions slightly improved around the Industrial Revolution, thanks to things like dental schools and proper tools but you’d still define it as cruel and unusual punishment today.
These esteemed practitioners blame tooth decay on something called “Tooth Worms.â€
A Life Or Death Trip To The Dentist
That’s right, because the definition of a “dentist” a century ago amounted to a man with decent knife skills, so going for an appointment could kill you. And they often did. Their title, “barber-surgeons,” also did not inspire a tremendous measure of confidence either. These “medical practitioners” shaved heads and removed teeth! Coincidentally, the mortality rate for such visits roughly translates to base jumping today.
No country was spared from the horrors of early dentistry. (getty)
A Very Slow Curve
Across the pond it wasn’t until 1878 when Britain finally required “dentists” and “dental surgeons” to actually register themselves. In America, the horror shows that more closely mirrored torture continued for much longer. The preferred tools for these so-called dentists were, of course, pliers and a few strong hands to hold down the patient. Any sort of anesthesia remained many years away.
The first drills for dentistry were pedal powered. Nothing like multi-tasking to add a degree of difficulty.
Some Brandy For Your Open Wound?
Therefore, if one of these quacks decided you needed a tooth pulled, a strong brandy was all you could hope for to nurse the hole when they literally just ripped a tooth out of your mouth. Since they actually didn’t know anything about teeth, gums, or really anything related to dentistry, just about every solution amounted to “let’s wrench it out.”
What an tooth infection from 1912 looks like. (flickr)
Sorry About Your Face
Thanks to that school of thought, it was a common occurrence for the patient to have their jaws accidentally dislodged during the “procedure.” Essentially, if you had a problem with your teeth in the old days, your options were: A) have it violently removed from your mouth or B) not go. You can guess what most people choose. Botched treatments and hellacious infections cast a truly terrifying light upon a visit to the dentist. It certainly didn’t help that affordable toothbrushes remained a pipe dream until around the mid-1800s. Meanwhile, cheap sugar from the West Indies flooded the market starting in 1650. You were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t.
Novacaine didn't make it's much heralded arrival until 1903.
Praise Drugs
Undoubtedly, one of the saving graces for toothaches everywhere came in the form of liquid cocaine. That gave people true relief from the barbarism they endured while in the chair. Of course, even by the early 20th-century dentistry was still so expensive sometimes people opted to have all their teeth removed. That helped inspire a lucrative trade in teeth for transplants. People would scour battlefields with pliers taking teeth from cadavers.
At least in the Old West, the patients weren’t the only ones having to fear the operation. One story told of a gunslinger, Outlaw Clay Allison who was suffering from a toothache. His first dentist drilled into the wrong tooth. After having it fixed by another, Allison paid the original offending dentist a visit. He then showed the dentist what's good for the goose is good for the gander by removing one of his teeth with a pair of pliers. Just be glad we’ve moved into a more civilized era of dental care.
