HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 11-12-11

Dentists

Today we can’t imagine the excruciating pain people went through before the age of painless dentistry. There was no such thing as “saving the tooth”. It just came out, usually by the local barber who doubled as the local solution to any dental problems you might have. This was done by pulling the aching tooth with a pair of pliers. They had something called laudanum they gave people for the pain. It was an opium preparation that was banned by the government at the turn of the 20^th century. People took laudanum for any number of reasons because it took away any pain associated with anything. Must have been some powerful stuff.

         

With the introduction of Novocain, modern dentistry skills were practiced by medically approved dentists. The listings in Salisbury begin in 1878 with just two people listed as “dentists”. Since there was no “Dr.” in front of their name, they could just as well have been barbers who did the extraction of the offending tooth. There was even a Mrs. A. F. Colley listed in 1907 as a dentist. The first mention of Dr. before a name was in 1940 when an Afro-American named G. Durrett White was listed in the Salisbury Directory. I imagine it was just an omission that he was the only dentist listed. The number of dentists in Salisbury escalated to fourteen by 1950 to serve the needs of the community.

         

Nowadays, they recommend a visit to the dentist at around two years old. When I was growing up the first visit was when you got your first cavity. Around 1950, municipalities started introducing fluoride into the local water and that has been a blessing to the health of children’s teeth.

         

Losing your baby teeth is something everyone goes through. We are all familiar with the “tooth fairy”. I used to save every one of my boys’ teeth as they came out and put the customary quarter under their pillow in exchange for the tooth. Times sure change as my son told me a couple of years ago that my granddaughter lost her first tooth and he decided the tooth fairy should give out one of the new gold colored dollars instead of a quarter. The next morning his daughter came in to show him what the tooth fairy had left. She had never seen one of the coins and asked him what it was. When he told her it was a dollar and that he had only gotten a quarter when he was little. She told him that the tooth fairy must like her better than she had liked him.

         

There have been so many great innovations in dentistry today that there is no reason for anyone to not take advantage of them. Bonding is one thing that comes to mind. It is relatively inexpensive and can restore a tooth to its original appearance in quick order. Times change – sometimes for the better.