Journal of the History of Dentistry

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Demonstrable feats of strength and valor using the teeth are found throughout many aspects of newsworthy items and social encounters in history past. Likewise, promotional opportunities relative to the dentition were also common. This article addresses many of these sensationalistic scenarios that were found on postcards related to dentistry in the early 1900s.

So often we hear cries of 'Well what do you expect, he or she had a terrible start in life." Given away soon after birth, didn't know its mother until nine years of age, brought up a mother's acquaintance but was not told. This paper examines how that fits with the life of Dame Margaret Seward, one of the outstanding members of the British dental profession, male or female.

The 1932 Olympiad in Los Angeles was not only transformative to the City of Los Angeles but also successful due to the efforts of several dedicated men. The Games were promoted by selected publicity that involved certain types of print media including stamps produced by the United States Postal Service. Advertising "seals" involved a vast number of businesses and products and all this added up to make the depression era Olympic Games successful. Included in the advertising seals were some participating California dentists...

Orthodontics in Brazil underwent significant transformations in the 1950s when several dentists returned to the country after completing advanced education courses in the specialty abroad. The first two orthodontic associations, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, were constituted in 1955 and 1959. The specialty's first event with characteristics of a professional meeting occurred in São Paulo in 1957, and Postgraduate Orthodontic education became available. This paper aims to describe the central insights of the constitution and evolving of the education of Orthodontics in Brazil...

The Royal Dental Hospital and School were founded in 1858/59 as the UK's first dental school. Despite being a leading school, because of government strictures it closed its doors in 1985. The building was taken over by a hotel. Not to be forgotten, however, a group of alumni ensured its memory by obtaining a Green Plaque to be placed on its walls.

Oral and maxillofacial pathology, the branch of dentistry concerning clinical and histopathological diagnosis of pathologies of the oral and maxillofacial region, started to develop in Colombia in the mid- 19th century. Since 1950s, dedicated dental clinicians from different dental schools played an important role in its inception and subsequent development. The first significant wave of progress occurred in the 1970s with the appearance of the first formally trained oral pathologists. It was sometime in the late 1980s and early 1990s that dentists Ines Velez and Benjamin Herazo had separate initiatives and created the first oral pathology postgraduate programs in Bogotá...

An encounter 50 years ago led to an interesting collection of tooth boxes. This paper will highlight many of those unique treasures emanating from Northwestern Europe.

A hot bed of organized dental leadership and visionary thinking in the mid-to-late 1800s came from Ohio, as many presidents of the American Dental Association were from that state. They were quite influential in leading this organization into the 20th century. One of the most dynamic and well-rounded individuals was Dr. George Watt…this paper will highlight his life as viewed by one of his peers.

Protection of athletes during sporting activities was of some concern even in the late 1800s. That concern continues, over 140 years later. In baseball, safety for the catcher was of primary concern because of inherent risks of being "behind the plate" while balls are pitched, bats are swung, and runners attempting to score come barreling in. Doug Allison was the skilled catcher for the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings who was known to use certain objects for self-protection, including George Wright's rubber "Mouthpiece...

David Forman worked as a general dental practitioner for many years. However, he eventually gave it up as his early hobbies took over his life. They included photography, musical composition, and gardening. As a professional photographer he was commissioned to take pictures of many places and peoples. Latterly he was famed for his photos of jazz musicians.

A unique "miracle cure-all" developed for both Man or Beast that was available from the mid-1800s into the 20 century is highlighted with some interesting anecdotal perspectives.

John Greenwood (1760-1819) was George Washington's preferred dentist. He practiced in New York and made at least one of eight sets of dentures Washington wore (currently in the collection of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM). We know very little about John Greenwood's (JG) formal education, except that he came from a famous family of dentists. He inherited from his father, Isaac Greenwood, one important book of the time, John Hunter's 1778 treatise, A Natural History of the Human Teeth . That copy was donated to the New York Academy of Medicine by descendants of John Greenwood...

For more than a century, at least, tooth extraction by ingenious mechanical contraptions has piqued the interest and imagination of illustrators, especially cartoonists. George Derby, an unknown British talent, and Ruben Garrett Lucius "Rube" Goldberg all dabbled in oral surgical mechanical humor.

An unusual card advertising the dental services of T.S. Henderson revives the story of an Irish dentist who left his homeland and came to Brooklyn, New York to practice. He was a fervent Irish Nationalist and was active in Irish causes. Henderson was an abuser of alcohol and eventually found dead in Albany, New York. The death was considered a suicide, but was it?

In 1844, Queen Victoria was 7 years into her 63-year reign of the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. John Tyler was 10th president of the United States, to be followed by the 11th president, by James K. Polk in March of 1845. Four years before, Dr. Horace H. Hayden and Chapin A. Harris co-founded The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. The school was chartered by an act of the Maryland State Legislature in 1840. Dr. Hayden died on 25 January 1844.

Two prominent personalities in Medicine, Lorenz Heister (1683-1758) and Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), compete for the attribution of the discovery of the buccal fat pad (BFP). A careful reading of the original texts reported here, seems to identify Bichat as the first to describe the BFP. However, Heister most probably was the first to describe an accessory parotid gland.

Olva Odlum qualified as a dentist in England but went on to make a professional life in Canada. She became the first female member of the Manitoba dental faculty and provided care for many dentally-deprived groups, including disabled patients, those with cancer and members of the First Nation tribes.

From the second half of the 18th century to the last third of the 19th century, a period of about 100 years, perpendicular (vertical) extraction, became an ideal for many authors, since molars were the most difficult teeth to remove. However, extraction instruments available at that time, caused pronounced damage to the alveolar bone and gingiva. For many authors and clinicians, vertical extraction was the only way to meet this challenge. This approach to tooth removal, while viable, came to an end when anatomically shaped forceps, adapted to the different morphologies of the various teeth were introduced, thereby changing 19th century dentistry with a new standard for tooth removal...

If one could be a patient repeatedly, every twenty-five years, starting in 1825, the evolution and comparison of dental care and dental practice would be historically meaningful. Such a time travel, as a perpetual patient through 200 years, is the purpose of this paper. The changes that occurred over 200 years provide a sense of the progress in treating patients and the transformation of a painful and dreaded experience to a highly sophisticated painless profession.