Lizzie Borden Society Forum

A couple of days ago, I had to go to the dentist, and it got me thinking. Did they have dentist then, and how painful was it?

I mean, it was painful for me and I had the nofacaine (sorry for the spelling) so I was wondering if they had anything like that, or they just pulled teeth with nothing. Just curious.

I did a Google search for dental history and found a couple of link which you may find interesting.

At the web site, http://www.drmickel.com/history.htm , under the heading, Novocain - Alfred Einhorn it states:

The first local anesthetic used in dentistry was Cocaine, introduced as an anesthetic by Carl Koller (1857-1944) in 1884. Researchers soon began working on a non-addictive substitute for Cocaine, and as a result German Chemist, Alfred Einkorn introduced Novocain in 1905.

Here is another dental history link:
http://www.fauchard.org/publications/hi ... istory.htm

Hope this helps to answer your question.

Mrs. Kelly, the next door neighbor of the Bordens, testified that she saw Andrew trying to enter the front door. She was at that time headed down street for a dental appointment.

According to de Mille's book (p27):

"She [Lizzie] had had a good deal of dental work done and there was a
gleam of gold when she smiled."

George Washington had a dentist, remember? His false teeth were made of ivory and human teeth.

During the Civil War the teeth of dead soldiers were shipped to Europe to be made into dental plates. . .

In earlier days, the same fellow would be a barber/dentist/surgeon.

The autopsies on Andrew and Abbie revealed that they both had "Artificial teeth in upper jaw."

On March the 1st 1872 Doc Holliday graduated and became a Doctor of denistry.

That's right, Pam, he "drilled" a couple of "patients" at the OK Corral with the Earps as assistants!

Yes he did! And he was quite good at it! lol

If you hunt at http://books.google.com/ for the target phrase "Dental Surgery" (with quotation marks intact to isolate the results) at least two editions of a textbook on dental surgery titled The Principles and Practice of Dentistry: Including Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Therapetics, Dental Surgery and Mechanism. may be found. The author was Chapin A. Harris, M.D., D.D.S. (Editions of the textbook were published in both 1882 and 1892.)

The listing suggests a fair number of advances in the field over ten years -if only because there's apparently a difference of some 460 pages between the 1882 and 1892 publications!

I guess it was just as painful to go to the dentist then as it is now.

Well, it could be, but luckily ether was around, having been first used as an anaesthetic in a surgical procedure ca. 1842. The first successful use of it in dentistry seems to have been ca. 1846.
see http://www.anesthesia-nursing.com/ether.html