Massachusetts General Hospital, 1845.
A group of the most distinguished doctors in Boston gather to see something incredible.
Dentist Horace Wells has claimed to have performed several tooth extractions using nitrous oxide as an anesthetic.
He promises a pain-free procedure and end to the agony of dental surgery. Wells is confident, cool,
He's done this before.
He gasses the volunteer a colleague with a bag of nitrous oxide and fixes his dental key around the man's rotten tooth.
He pulls. The man screams then yelling that Wells is a fraud.
He leaps up and dashes for the confused dentist to assistance. [They] try to hold the furious man back,
but they fail, and he chases Wells across the stage. The audience in turn furious at this apparent hoax turns on wells as well.
"Throw him out!" They shout this is a university, not a circus! thus began the greatest revolution in dentistry and
aesthetics.
This episode is sponsored by child and teen checkups program of Minnesota. As a parent, of course, you're worried about your child,
So you should visit your nearest clinic for a wellness check free for infants through young adults.
And you'll be happy knowing your child is healthy. Learn more at the links below
When we last left off the air for chard had revolutionized the practice of dentistry with his textbook, the surgeon dentist. Giving dentistry a
scientific basis and spreading knowledge that early dentists often concealed as trade secrets, and
Following fauchard, more books expanded the information available on dentistry. Making France the leading nation in oral care.
In fact, the word dentist itself is a French one, a legacy from this time period by the 18th century.
Dentists had developed new tools such as the dental key, which pulled teeth without damaging gums.
Like the old pliers did, and French dentists even started pioneering braces that gradually moved teeth into more optimal position.
They also improved dentures, crafting full mouth sets from ivory, carved horse teeth,
porcelain, and even human teeth.
Though denture makers often did advise these teeth is coming from dead soldiers,
A lot of them actually came from buying them off the poor or enslaved or in many cases from grave robbers. Yeah,
You know what?
I'm just gonna pretend they were bought at cost from the tooth fairy.
The Scottish surgeon John Hunter, father of scientific surgery even experimented with transplanting teeth from living donors, though
none lasted more than a year. See, the recipients gums at first grew into the gaps of the dead donated tooth
But because it didn't have a root, it easily tore and dang it Rob we talked about this last time man!
Ease up on the gross stuff! Okay? We already talked about corpse teeth..
(Ahem), but though technology was improving dentures were often uncomfortable and ill-fitting, making it difficult to eat or even talk
making it difficult to eat or even talk.
Most were held in the mouth by springs, with a
tendency to leap out if the wearer opened their mouth too wide. and if they broke they'd fill the patient's mouth with shrapnel, in fact
George Washington who only had one tooth by the time he became president, by the way,
was so pained by his dentures, that he rarely ate or even spoke at state dinners.
Yeah, that portrait on the one dollar bill, That's a man trying to deal with severe oral discomfort. In truth,
Many of these dentures were more aesthetic than practical. The beginning of cosmetic dentistry.
Because this dental revolution was especially fed by life at the French royal court, where appearances were extremely important to gaining and maintaining
power.
Cosmetic dentistry was a service for the rich,
Increasingly served by consumer products like tooth cleaning powders, brushes, and whitening solutions. Many that did more harm than good.
In addition, new artistic movements placed more emphasis on the mouth. and began to consider the open mouth smile,
showing teeth as a symbol of beauty, health, and happiness.
Apparently, people in Europe didn't use to smile with their mouths open.
Everyone was just Mona lisa, saying it pretty hard.
but all these new advances in dentistry did come along at just the right time, because
Europeans had just discovered something.
They really really liked sugar in all its forms,
Refined sugar in the newly popular drinks tea and coffee plus molasses and pastries.
Europeans went nuts for all that stuff, and it had serious consequences for people's oral health. Tooth decay,
already a serious problem due to their love of sucrose (Sugar.) filled bread products went into overdrive.
But the glory days of French dentistry were coming to an end. With the revolution sweeping the country,
association with the royal court did them no favors, and as a result the center of the profession was about to move to
America in the mid 19th century. trade started to professionalize jobs,
like dentistry were no longer something that silversmiths could just do on the side, or learn through an apprenticeship. And it had to be
regulated and connected to a degree and in
1839. The cause of professional dentistry got a big boost when the world's first College of Dentistry opened in Baltimore, along with its first
scientific journal. and professional organization 20 years later. American oral health professionals formed the American Dental Association (ADA)
Solidifying dentistry as an independent medical field. British dentists by contrast became a subset of surgeons,
but whether
independent or part of the surgeons trade, the 19th century is when dentist's offices and tools began to look like what we'd recognized today. The
office itself previously just like, an office. Increasingly took on the sterile appearance of a laboratory,
With hard surfaces that were easy to clean and later disinfect.
Adjustable dentist chairs replaced the leather lounges the French dentist had used, and also dental assistants
Mostly young women became a part of nearly every practice, adding two extra hands that made more operations possible.
Vulcanized rubber made it easy to mold dentures and bridges to fit the patient's mouth,
Eliminating the dangerous and uncomfortable springs. and while pedal operated dentistry drills had existed since the late 1700s,
The electric drill made fillings far more efficient and extractions less necessary. And okay,
I know no one likes that drill, but it is definitely preferable to someone scraping out the rotten bits with a sharp spoon.
Which is what they used to do.
But the biggest advancement was....
anesthetic. Finally delivering what dentist had promised for centuries a painless operation.
Yet since you watched the opening of this episode,
you can probably guess that some weird nonsense happened before that, and you would be right because the first
Anesthetic used in dentistry was nitrous oxide. And before a medical tool, it was used for cheap entertainment.
Everyone knew that nitrous oxide did some shall we say,
strange things to the body in mind. in the 19th century traveling showmen,
Mostly charlatans claiming to be doctors and giving pseudo-scientific lectures ,would go from city to city putting on
"Gas frolics". Where they'd take members of the audience dose them with a bag of nitrous and just sort of see what happened.
Sometimes they'd laugh or babble uncontrollably, while at other times
they might lose all feeling and run around the stage vaulting into and off of furniture without registering pain.
It was after one such display in
1844 that a Boston dentist named Horace Wells (Same dude,)
wondered whether the substance that would finally usher in pain free dentistry, had been under their noses or rather on their stages all along.
He started to use nitrous oxide on patients during extractions and hey, it worked!
Excited he set up a demonstration,
Claiming he'd extract a tooth from his former student: William Morton, without pain.
And well you saw how that went. See, Wells was worried about accidentally overdosing Morton and killing him on stage.
So he went a little light with the gas. Wells career was over.
Victim of the difficulty in finding a proper nitrous dosage which would eventually preclude it from use as an anesthetic.
He'd died in a prison as a destitute chloroform addict.
Morton, on the other hand, would help discover and
Pioneer the use of ether rags as an alternative. Though to be honest,
his ending was no better. After the world had hailed his great humanitarian innovation, Morton tried to patent it and get rich.
Instead he too ended in poverty and mired in litigation.
Oh, and you know what? On that subject, the guy who created the vulcanized rubber dentures?
He sued everyone - but that ended real quick. When one of the guys he was suing shot him. Lesson:
Don't do something nice for medical science, then sue everybody. And then we have, oh boy. Nope. You know what?
I'm just gonna skip this part about dentistry's short love affair with cocaine as an injectable anesthetic, thank you very much.
But as dark as its beginning was the anesthetics revolution essentially created modern dentistry.
Anesthetic made more extensive operations possible from tooth implants, to root canals, to wisdom teeth removal. And it also inadvertently
Increased people's regular check-ups, because once the pain of dental operations was largely gone,
Patients were a lot less hesitant to visit their dentist for a cleaning and assessment. And listen,
I could go on and on about all of the technological achievements dentists experienced during the 20th century, how x-rays
revolutionized how we identify and treat problems. How fluoride has improved oral health, and how floss works
so much better than the wooden toothpicks people used before. But you know all that that's the world we all live in now and ideally,
Visit twice a year and on that note. I'll say it again.
Please go visit your dentist at least twice a year, if you're able, because as brutal as those ancient dentists were in last week's episode;
they did realize something that many dentists forgot about until recently. Your oral health is part of your total health.
It's all one system. tooth obsesses left untreated can lead to brain infections, and
People with poor oral health are more at risk for heart attack because infections can travel via the bloodstream.
During World War one, soldiers actually died from lack of dental care.
Going to the dentist today is more comfortable and less
painful than any other time in history. And look, we do know it can be expensive and sometimes isn't covered by insurance.
One possible workaround is trying to find the nearest dental college.
Aspiring dental hygienists always need practice, and most offer free cleanings. Not to mention,
there are also programs that provide free services. And,
speaking of which,
Once again, thanks so much to child and teen checkups program of Minnesota for sponsoring this series. As a parent,
I imagine you're always a little worried about your child. Are they healthy? Are you missing anything?
But that's why there's free child and teen checkups.
Just bring your child to your clinic for a free wellness check, whether they're a new infant or 20 years young almost adult. Or any
age in between your doctor will check hearing, vision, teeth. That's a big one. And offer wellness information for your child's age.
So you can be happy knowing your child's healthy and best of all, it's all completely free. Learn more at the links below.