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knowledgeequalsblackpower:

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biomedicalephemera:

Portrayals of Dentistry in the 17th Century

I had the privilege to get a chipped filling extracted from my gingiva and to have the filling re-done earlier today, in a process that was about as fun as, well, getting an enamel chip dug out of your gums and then getting a large filling right over the seriously-inflamed gumline.

Of course, as much as I piss and moan about how much it hurt, my pain is nothing compared to people in the 17th century. Well, at least according to the artists of the era. There seems to have been a particular interest in the pain inflicted by the dentists and barber-surgeons of the time, and the fascination of the people around the “patient” in the apparent misery they’re going through.

Dentists were largely seen as below barber-surgeons until the very late 1600s-early 1700s, when one Pierre Fauchard took massive steps towards legitimization of the profession.

Top: “The Dentist” Gerard van Honthorst, 1622.
Center Left: “The Quackdoctor” Jan Steen, 1651.
Center Right: “The Extraction of Tooth” Gerard Dou, ca. 1630-1635.
Bottom: “The Toothpuller” Caravaggio (probable), ca. 1608-1610.

I hate going to the dentist. I actually have an appointment tomorrow :(

Meanwhile in Africa thousands of years earlier……..

Egypt was bloody amazing when it came to medicine. The coarse corn they ate gave them dental caries fairly frequently, and it was apparently widely known that to drain an abscess caused by the caries with a thin reed would not only alleviate the pain, but would keep the teeth intact much longer than leaving it be or simply yanking out the tooth (as was the practice in Europe).