'There has never been a better time to be alive', a close friend told me last year. I thought of his remark today during a trip to the museum of dentistry inside Surgeons' Hall in Edinburgh, and concluded he had a point.
I went to see this rather odd slice of history with some trepidation, for I have the misfortune to require frequent treatment by dentists. And yet, I can say that this is one of the most fascinating museums I have visited.
Who knew, for instance, that it was the Chinese who invented the bristle toothbrush, and that Europeans only began using these devices in the late 1700s? As a former resident of Japan, I was also intrigued by the yanagi-yoji on display. These implements, which are about the length of a chopstick,were expertly crafted from willow, with half serving as a toothpick and the opposite end resembling a very bristly paintbrush.
I catch myself grimacing several times as I look at the items in the cabinets. There are 'dental keys', corkscrew-like tools with claws at the bottom which were used for pulling out teeth two hundred years ago. Such extraction was 'a primitive and painful operation' prior to the 1840s, I read. No kidding.
One object looks thoroughly out of place: an eighteenth century knuckleduster. Reading the inscription, all becomes clear. The owner, an Englishman from Derbyshire, used it 'to defend himself against highwaymen' on his way to his practice.
As a history enthusiast, I lap up the details. Dead soldiers were a valued source of replacement teeth, I discover. Indeed, the carnage at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 resulted not merely in the fall of Napoleon, it also had the lesser known consequence of freeing up bucketloads of teeth. These 'supplied the needs of dentistry for many years'.
Most striking of all are the centuries-old paintings and mezzotints of individuals having their teeth removed. The practitioners of these rudimentary operations are depicted as evil-looking, sadistic individuals. Given the agony involved, I suppose this is understandable. There is even an ukiyo-e, a Japanese wood-block print, showing a man in a kimono extracting a woman's tooth with a terrifyingly large pair of forceps.
Never again will I succumb to self-pity when faced with yet another appointment with the dentist. I will instead lie back and watch the video showing the habits of whales in the Caribbean, and thank my lucky stars I wasn't born two hundred years ago.
