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Oobject gathered pictures of dentistry from past and probably pain-filled generations. Despite the visceral horror one might feel by looking at some of them, one must also admire the ingenuity behind some of them, such as this clockwork drill from the Nineteenth Century.
Link via Gizmodo | Previously: A Pictorial History of Dentistry
Cavities in teeth are normally drilled clean and then filled with an artificial material. This procedure could become obsolete if a new hormone treatment proves successful:
The gel or thin film contains a peptide known as MSH, or melanocyte-stimulating hormone. Previous experiments, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that MSH encourages bone regeneration.
Bone and teeth are fairly similar, so the French scientists reasoned that if the MSH were applied to teeth, it should help healing as well.
To test their theory, the French scientists applied either a film or gel, both of which contained MSH, to cavity-filled mice teeth. After about one month, the cavities had disappeared, said Benkirane-Jessel.
Link via Popular Science | Image: NIH
We’ve been trying to preserve, repair, or remove our teeth for thousands of years. From the manual bow drill to modern veneers, this post shows how far we have come in the quest for good, or at least functional, teeth. There are no drill sounds, but some pictures may make someone with dental sensitivity uncomfortable. In other words, they may set your teeth on edge. Link -via mental_floss
Edgar Parker opened his dental practice in 1892 and found business was not that great. So he took his practice on the road and became “the P.T. Barnum of dentistry.” Dentistry as entertainment?
Working in the 1890s during the height of ‘humbugs,’ ‘dime museums’, and rational amusements, Parker did what any natural-born-showman would do. He took a cue from the best and hired one of P.T. Barnam’s ex-managers to help him take his practice on the road. From his horse drawn office, amid his show girls and buglers, Parker promised that he would painlessly extract a rotten tooth for 50 cents. And if the extraction wasn’t painless, he would give the customer $5.00, the equivalent of roughly $115 today. Parker’s band actually served a three way purpose. First it drew a crowd. Second, it distracted the patient whose tooth was being pulled (along with a healthy cup of whiskey or an aqueous solution of cocaine he called “hydrocaine,”) and third, it drowned out any possible moans of pain emitted from a patient.
Parker even legally changed his first name to Painless. Link
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This dentist no doubt inspires confidence in his patients with his tower made from 28,000 teeth from previous patients:
This 8ft tower of teeth is foul, and the summit of 15 years work by Yu Qian, a Chinese dentist who is trying to raise awareness about dental hygiene by word of mouth. Or, as it turns out, an awesome viral film gone global.
His piece of art is made from 28,000 human teeth (URGH). So far he has treated 100,000 patients, and ‘harvested’ 28,000 diseased teeth from his patients.
Link via The Presurfer
