64 Wimpole Street
London W1G 8YS
Thursday November 3
2016
It would seem perverse
if you had an appointment at the dentist, for actual treatment, to be visiting the Dental Museum barely an hour before but that was the situation for one of us
this week. It was partly the proximity as Wimpole Street for over a century has
been the ‘go-to’ address for private doctors, many of whom can still be found
here between the institutions and august
bodies – Number 1 is the HQ for the Royal Society of Medicine, the nurses were
round the corner – but today we were heading for the dentists. Many of the
houses are sturdy and handsome Georgian terraces but the BDA must have
been ‘filling’ (Ho-ho) where a gap
appeared as the building dates from 1967. (By the way the numbering is so
long-established the numbers go up one side and down the other – none of that
odds and evens business.)
As Jo said, dentists
are in the main disliked not for who they are but for what they do, which is
often to cause pain, so everyone at the BDA was totally charming and welcoming.
It is their professional body so there are numerous meeting and lecture rooms
and we were directed to the museum, which is just off the library/archive on
the ground floor. I suppose with the exception of the large chairs (and there
is one of those on display) and the spittoons much of what dentists use comes
small and the exhibits are well displayed and well captioned in a handful of
themed cabinets.
You are drawn into the
exhibition by a series of early/mid-20th century posters encouraging
parents to care for their children’s teeth – save those precious little pearls.
Baby teething is a fairly brutal process and truth to say teeth can cause
discomfort throughout life. Sadly Jo and I belong to what is known in the trade
as ‘the heavy metal generation’ namely post war children where a combination of
sugar coming off rationing, Vitamin C supplements coming in syrupy forms and
relative ignorance about tooth care means we have more fillings than teeth,
whereas the next generations benefited from the addition of fluoride and more
awareness of the damage of sugar in all its forms.
But back to the museum
which is arranged thematically.
Dentistry has a very
short history compared to medicine – the first text book appeared in 1728 in
French whilst in the UK it was mid-19th century before practitioners
started researching, writing and practising in a more coherent way: up until
then any ‘dentistry’ (more likely brutal extractions) was done by the barber or
the blacksmith, the latter having the tools. Sir John Tomes, who is honoured
here, not only helped improve the instruments and the research but also became
a lecturer and founded the British Dental Association in 1880. Up until then
practitioners needed no qualifications and anyone could call themselves a
dentist – it was as late as 1921 that the Dentists Act finally ensured those
extracting and filling your teeth had been appropriately trained.
Decay is easy to spot
and there are several examples of rotted and sometimes filled teeth that were
found in the remains recently excavated in Farringdon as part of the Elizabeth Line construction works.
Though some of these
sets of teeth are probably later, there being perhaps several different ages of
burial ground? One set is filled with a
little gold – unusual in what might have been a paupers’ burial site but who
knows how anyone landed up there?
The 20th
century saw advances in drilling and filling (there are foot and hand operated
drills for you to try, making early dentistry seem quite a ‘physical’ job) with
the invention of amalgam fillings – a mixture of silver coins and mercury.
Jo and I certainly remembered
those early heavy slow drills then replaced by higher speed ones – no sound
effects at the Museum but it did not need much imagination to remember the earlier ones, a small scale
woodwork drill only noisier, let alone the whine of the current ones.. Gold has
long been a favourite material for fillings and crowns as it is totally
tasteless and does not decay or crack, yet can be moulded accurately, so it
remains a preferred material.
Of course if drilling
and crowning does not work the next stage is extraction (multiple forceps on
display) followed by ‘false teeth’. Again the evolution here is interesting –
ranging from small carved bits of ivory (hippo or walrus being the most
favoured), which are then tied in place with fine silk threads – how insecure
this must have felt? The big revolution came when vulcanite was invented (by Mr Goodyear).
The 20th
century not only saw a range of new materials open to the medical and dental
professions but with the proliferation of professional expertise (the first
dental school was opened in 1889) there
were also dental dispensaries for the poor before the advent of the National Health
Service.
Alongside these
technical innovations the profession also used anaesthesia – I will not
elaborate as we have already visited the Centre for Anaesthesia and it makes for strangely bland and
uninteresting displays.
Not so the section on
Prevention – from the jolly posters advocating better care of your children’s
teeth to early toothbrushes made of bones (the handles) and pig’s hair… There
is everything here from novelty toothbrush cases to early forms of tooth
powder. William Addis produced the first toothbrush
(there’s a nice little
film here if you can get your computer to load it). Preventive dentistry became
serious after the First World War when the Services realised that significant
numbers of recruits were turned away because of poor or rotten teeth.
This concludes the
main exhibition but we were encouraged to go downstairs where there was a
special exhibition on dentistry during the First World War when their skills
were needed not so much for the day to day fillings etc but for repairs
following serious facial injuries. This is where dentistry meets up with
maxilla-facial surgery, a later surgical speciality.
We thought the
displays were well presented – rather than cases full of similar instruments
they explain more fully, and in a very accessible way, including some films, the history and use of key items and
significant developments acknowledging the pioneers of their profession. In amongst the exhibits are frequent cartoons
(not easily reproduced) and other humorous touches – we liked the tooth shaped
(perfect of course) stools, and the ‘shop’ made an instant sale with its
clockwork chattering wind-up teeth.
Next step – book that
check-up…
Eurosharp is a diversified medical and salon store, created with the vision of Sam to provide you with unique medical and salon accessories. Founded in 2019, located in Manchester, Eurosharp brings you dental kits, dental articulators, barbar scissors and razers , orthopedic and ENT.
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