Frontier Dentistry

I’ve often said “The good old days really weren’t all that good.” Professor Joanna Bourke wrote “Agonizing toothache, horrifying extractions and barbaric tools have cast a large shadow over our dental past.” No truer words were ever spoken. Trained dentists didn’t exist until the 1800s and prior to that the care of the nation’s mouths was in the hands of blacksmiths and barbers who doubled as surgeons. Like something right out of the Spanish Inquisition, they wielded pli