Overview

Though the prospect may fill us with dread, most of us need dental treatment at some stage – and the reality is that better care has never been available, as this fully illustrated book shows. Early dentistry was amateurish and limited to barber-surgeons, travelling tooth-pullers and blacksmiths, with patients often suffering as much from the cure as the malady; and even as things improved in the eighteenth century, fashionable dentures were still made from the teeth of dead soldiers or even of the poor. This authoritative introduction looks at this whole grisly history as well as at the increasing professionalism seen from the late nineteenth century onwards, which has led to very dramatic improvements in dental treatment, including modern dentures, amalgam fillings, anaesthetics and orthodontics, and to the current boom in cosmetic dentistry.

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9780747811350

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Rachel Bairsto has been Curator of the British Dental Association Museum for ten years and is President of the Lindsay Society for the History of Dentistry. She has written extensively on the history of dentistry for a variety of dental publications and has been interviewed on television and radio. The BDA is the professional association for dentists in the UK and membership currently stands at 23,0000. The BDA Museum holds the most comprehensive collection of dental heritage in the UK with over 30,000 objects spanning over 500 years. Highlights of the collection include the first clockwork drill, crude ivory dentures and early toothbrushes. The museum is open to the public and operates an active events and exhibitions programme and a school education programme.

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