Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm joh
Speaker 1: caught and then fun of me this. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: had something in my mouth. It is stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: and I have no room to make fun of you. Friend.
Speaker 1: I've been on my own dental journey for some time
Speaker 1: now and I'm still in the midst of it. What
Speaker 1: are you got going on? All sorts of stuff I
Speaker 1: was not granted with, like great strong, um, indestructible, like
Speaker 1: teeth and all that, you know, like the feeling I
Speaker 1: thought like I just hadn't taken enough care of him whatever.
Speaker 1: But now that I actually do take really good care
Speaker 1: of my teeth, I found like, no, it's they're just
Speaker 1: not as great as they could be. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm fully aware with that emotion, as you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't even know if I said
Speaker 1: a may set on the air, but my front went,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to have it redone. Yeah, yeah, when
Speaker 1: is that going to happen? It's sort of I mean,
Speaker 1: right now, he's basically like, it's not causing any trouble
Speaker 1: right now, but it's gonna happen at some point, so
Speaker 1: he almost made it sound like, whenever you feel like
Speaker 1: you're up for being toothless again for three months, let
Speaker 1: me know just time, just in time for our next
Speaker 1: live show whenever that is. Oh jeez, I forgot about that. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll see. Yeah, well, it's not like
Speaker 1: you haven't been on stage without a tooth before. You're
Speaker 1: taking them out like that was your stick at at
Speaker 1: the beginning of a number of shows. So don't get
Speaker 1: shy these days, Chuck. No, you gotta you gotta work
Speaker 1: your deficiencies. That's true. So we're talking about the history
Speaker 1: of dynastry, which, by the way, people listening, I know
Speaker 1: you know this probably, but it wasn't until like late
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century that that word was even used. Really,
Speaker 1: they didn't even call it dynastry until then. They called
Speaker 1: it fizzle stick. And we should thank quite a few
Speaker 1: people here. I'm sure you have some uh websites that
Speaker 1: you looked at, but I went to the British Dental
Speaker 1: Association art took dot org History Daily, Uh, this great
Speaker 1: website called all Things Georgian. I think it's a blog
Speaker 1: where you can find some cool old pictures of antiquated
Speaker 1: dentistry tools. Uh, and then a book by James Wybrandt
Speaker 1: called The Excruciating History of Dentistry insert colon sound. Has
Speaker 1: that been happening, by the way, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think Jerry thought we were joking about that. Literally,
Speaker 1: I've just been saying that. I'm pretty sure, well I
Speaker 1: haven't picked it up on any of the QA I've
Speaker 1: been doing. I haven't either, So we'll find out. I'll
Speaker 1: pay extra attention UM to some tales and oral oddities
Speaker 1: from Babylon two braces. Very nice. Yeah, huge, huge shout
Speaker 1: out also to our boy Dave Ruse for helping us
Speaker 1: with this one as well. Yeah, this was my idea,
Speaker 1: and as when we instructed Dave, I said, Hey, Dave,
Speaker 1: how about history of dentistry? And it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about any thing modern that works. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about all the old stuff, right, and
Speaker 1: all the stuff that they tried along the way that
Speaker 1: people screamed and excruciating pain. And actually that's I think
Speaker 1: that's that's good for UM for pointing out, Chuck that
Speaker 1: there are points where what stuff we're talking about like
Speaker 1: might actually make you feel faint, like it happened to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a trigger warning for sure. There was this one
Speaker 1: site called Science Museum Group Collection Cumbersome, but they have
Speaker 1: a lot of um dental old dental stuff in their collection,
Speaker 1: and they have very high rise pictures and a lot
Speaker 1: of them have descriptions of how the thing was used,
Speaker 1: and like, I like, i'd like break out in a
Speaker 1: little trickle sweat along the top of my lip and
Speaker 1: like get a little woozy just reading about this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty tough with that kind of thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can talk about poop all the live long day,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to like pulling teeth out without
Speaker 1: anesthetics and things like that, it's my knees get a
Speaker 1: little wobbly. Yeah. And I don't know if you had
Speaker 1: the same reaction, but looking at these ol dental tools,
Speaker 1: it's it's like, well that was clearly also this you know,
Speaker 1: like some sort of ironsmithing tool or whatever. And they
Speaker 1: just said, well, hey, I bet you if you move
Speaker 1: that little spont dibbot over here, you could also use
Speaker 1: it to crank out a molar. And as we'll see,
Speaker 1: if you wanted a tooth remove for a very long time,
Speaker 1: depending on where you lived, you probably went to go
Speaker 1: see your local smithie. Yeah, crazy stuff just settle in everybody.
Speaker 1: Let's start at the very very beginning, because for at
Speaker 1: least seven thousand years people have been talking and writing
Speaker 1: about toothaches. The Babylonians, I believe, we're among the first
Speaker 1: to ever create an alphabet, to ever write anything down.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they wrote about was toothaches
Speaker 1: and the idea of where toothaches came from, which are
Speaker 1: called toothworms chuck, which are cute sounding. Actually you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: the toothworm is what you I think it is, even
Speaker 1: though it's not real, but little tiny worms that get
Speaker 1: in your mouth, and sometimes that they would originate in
Speaker 1: your mouth like spontaneously. Sometimes they got into your mouth
Speaker 1: somehow and worm their way literally into your tooth like
Speaker 1: the the non existent core of an apple. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is you know. They said, all right, here's what
Speaker 1: you should do. You should you should uh do some
Speaker 1: sort of ceremony to the gods and ask for a
Speaker 1: little help from the gods. And then later on they said, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we can actually try something. And that early something
Speaker 1: and this is two to five zero BC years ago
Speaker 1: for most people would say, Uh, they would heat up
Speaker 1: a piece of um. They would heat up bees wax
Speaker 1: filled with hinbane seeds and put it in your mouth,
Speaker 1: and so it basically fills your mouth up with the
Speaker 1: smoke of the hinbane seed, which is a nightshade and
Speaker 1: it can be really dangerous if there's a lot of it.
Speaker 1: But this guy, I just showed you where they were at.
Speaker 1: It seems like all the earliest and for a long
Speaker 1: time mitigation efforts were trying anything to just numb the
Speaker 1: pain a little bit for a while, because hem pain
Speaker 1: will do that in small doses, I'm sure. And it
Speaker 1: was basically like, let me stop the pain for a
Speaker 1: little while, but the pain would always come back, so
Speaker 1: eventually they had to move to extraction. Yes, and that
Speaker 1: those toothworm The toothworm theory of teeth pain had some
Speaker 1: really like um staying effect, like it was around in
Speaker 1: the medieval medieval times in Europe. Uh, if you actually
Speaker 1: go to medieval times today in your local suburb, you'll
Speaker 1: hear them talk about toothworms. And there was this No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so unless somebody really did their homework.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't surprise me. No, Um, there was a
Speaker 1: study I ran across that talked about and this was
Speaker 1: a paper from talked about a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner
Speaker 1: who cited toothworms as the cause of somebody's tooth that
Speaker 1: they were healing and they used that same beeswax, henbane,
Speaker 1: he um like medicine to treat it. Here's what I
Speaker 1: want to know. Did they actually see any worms ever? Like,
Speaker 1: was this somebody whose mouth was so infected they got
Speaker 1: worms or something? Oh boy, wouldn't that be something. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were completely invisible. It just
Speaker 1: seems a little weird. Maybe they saw pus and and
Speaker 1: it came out as in kind of a worm like form,
Speaker 1: like is it from the gums and somebody thought it
Speaker 1: was worms or who knows, maybe somebody did have worms.
Speaker 1: It seems weird to just be like it's worms without
Speaker 1: anyone ever having seen worms of any kind. I told
Speaker 1: you guys, I didn't know that you're talking about mouth
Speaker 1: bus Uh. Let's skip forward to ancient Egypt where we
Speaker 1: have who maybe the first dentist, and this is around
Speaker 1: b C or to six zero zero during the time
Speaker 1: of king Is that dozer? That's what That's how I'd
Speaker 1: say j is silent, right, uh de hooser a dohoeser. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a scribe called Hessy Ree who and they
Speaker 1: read the hieroglyphics on the scribes burial chamber that basically said,
Speaker 1: this guy is the best in town dentistry. He was
Speaker 1: the greatest of those who deal with teeth, uh, and
Speaker 1: of the physicians. And that was I think one of
Speaker 1: the first sort of mentions of someone you know, written
Speaker 1: down on uh, well not paper, but hieroglyphics written down
Speaker 1: that someone actually did this for a living. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: paper actually did come not too much longer after that. Um.
Speaker 1: The Papyrus Ebers, which we've talked about many times, it's
Speaker 1: a scroll, and it had a lot of stuff medical
Speaker 1: ailments and treatments for those ailments, and there were treatments
Speaker 1: for toothaches and um other kinds of like oral problems
Speaker 1: like bleeding gums and stuff like that. And of course,
Speaker 1: because what they had a hand at the time where
Speaker 1: like medicinal cures, they prescribed all sorts of medicinal cures.
Speaker 1: And it's like you said, there was basically just this
Speaker 1: aim to cure the pain um, and they would do
Speaker 1: all sorts of things like use opium, or they would
Speaker 1: use that henbane or other kinds of night shade. But
Speaker 1: then also, um, problematically, they would use arsenic, which um
Speaker 1: is it really does kill disease tissue, sure, but it
Speaker 1: also can kill you two in some pretty horrific ways. Um.
Speaker 1: What's crazy about that is not that the ancient Egyptians
Speaker 1: were using that, you know, like thirty years ago, but
Speaker 1: that that was still in use into the modern age,
Speaker 1: Like people were using arsenic for a very long time
Speaker 1: to treat mouth stuff. Um. And in fact, we've done
Speaker 1: a lot of weird stuff to our mouth and use
Speaker 1: a lot of things we shouldn't have been using in
Speaker 1: our mouths over the years. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of a bleeding gums Murphy joke there a minute ago.
Speaker 1: But all you have to do is say his name
Speaker 1: and then I guess, uh you you mentioned ancient Chinese
Speaker 1: medicine or a traditional Chinese medicine, and they were kind
Speaker 1: of on board early on. It's funny because sometimes people
Speaker 1: seem to be going toward the right thing because they
Speaker 1: were using things like rinses and mouth washes. Makes sense
Speaker 1: they would also use enemas. I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 1: Enemas have been listed to cure a whole host of things,
Speaker 1: but I think I don't know about toothaches. It was
Speaker 1: more for the distraction, is my guess, right, than someone
Speaker 1: punches you in the mouth. But acupuncture. Of the three
Speaker 1: acupuncture sites for TCM, twenty six of them are tied
Speaker 1: to toothache relief. UM. And then piling on from the
Speaker 1: different cultures that added and contributed to like our general
Speaker 1: human knowledge of how to treat problems with the mouth. Um.
Speaker 1: The Hindus from say like India and Southeast Asia and
Speaker 1: South Asia. UM. They put their stuff down in the Vedas,
Speaker 1: which were a bunch of ancient texts much like the
Speaker 1: Papyrus Ebers, which dealt with things like medical conditions, including um,
Speaker 1: how did not just treat tooth problems in teeth pain
Speaker 1: but also how to like prevent it. And they actually
Speaker 1: prescribed using like a twig with the end with the
Speaker 1: end fraid to um to basically chew on and also
Speaker 1: just kind of brush with it was like the first
Speaker 1: earliest toothbrush. And they also had dentrifices, which is a
Speaker 1: type something you would use to clean or polish or
Speaker 1: scrape off your teeth. Um made of honey oil and herbs,
Speaker 1: which is pretty great. Like that was pretty groundbreaking, frankly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's people still use, uh, I mean in survival
Speaker 1: handbooks and stuff. They say, if you're you know, lost
Speaker 1: in the woods for for many many days, you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to take care of your teeth. It sounds silly,
Speaker 1: but if you're wandering around for three weeks, uh, you
Speaker 1: want to just feel fresh. But but the whole twig
Speaker 1: fraid twig thing is what they still people still do
Speaker 1: that in different cultures around the world, chewing on twigs.
Speaker 1: You can even buy some of that stuff still uh
Speaker 1: here in the West, and uh like dental twigs to
Speaker 1: chew on and stuff. Yeah, And if you ever have
Speaker 1: closely watched Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth Paltrow uses one in
Speaker 1: that movie that she really she does. I saw it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I closely watched it, though, Well,
Speaker 1: you need to go back and closely watch it. That
Speaker 1: thing is full of so many um like, so much imagery,
Speaker 1: so much illuminatut stuff. It's crazy. Really, did you watch
Speaker 1: it recently? No? For some reason, her chewing on that
Speaker 1: twig made an enormous impression on me because I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that movie since the nineties, but I've never forgotten that,
Speaker 1: And it's not like one of those things where you know,
Speaker 1: like I only think of it when I'm confronted with
Speaker 1: Shakespeare and love, like it just pops into my head
Speaker 1: every once in a while, weirdly, so I was primed
Speaker 1: for this episode, Chuck. So when you think when I
Speaker 1: say the words Gwyneth Paltrow, I know you think of
Speaker 1: two things in this order. Her duet with Huey Lewis
Speaker 1: that's third cruising? Did you just do that to me?
Speaker 1: Chewing on twigs? What's what's the third one? Just goop
Speaker 1: in general? Okay, that's probably just goop. Second, so chewing
Speaker 1: on the twig goop. And then yes, that duet that
Speaker 1: I can sometimes push out of my head until you
Speaker 1: bring it up. Um. So, now we move on to
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, which is where you know, things sort of
Speaker 1: took a leap forward in a way, like a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff did in ancient Rome, not to the kind
Speaker 1: of modern dental work that we're you know, used to
Speaker 1: today obviously, but for the time not too bad, and
Speaker 1: that they did things like crowns, they did bridge work, Uh,
Speaker 1: had dental prosthetics made from things like ivory or bone,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Uh, so they kind of advanced things
Speaker 1: a little bit. There was a huge bit, if you
Speaker 1: ask me, yeahs enormous leap forward. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: I don't I'm sure they look pretty jankie. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: you could still chew a turkey leg, and by god,
Speaker 1: you'd be grateful you could. Probably it didn't matter what
Speaker 1: you looked like in ancient room. Everybody too wasted on wine.
Speaker 1: Oh I missed my time and place, didn't I you
Speaker 1: really did. Uh. There was a position, their name all
Speaker 1: less Cornelius Celsus, who filled supposedly filled the first cavities,
Speaker 1: but they weren't traditionally like we think of cavities. They
Speaker 1: were from poard lead, and they were meant to serve
Speaker 1: as something to grab onto to actually pull a tooth.
Speaker 1: So I guess he would do it to like some
Speaker 1: sort of a post or a stem or something. I
Speaker 1: think he would poor. Yeah, it's weird because you would
Speaker 1: have to use molten lead, and you can't just go
Speaker 1: around pouring that on people's teeth and expecting their face
Speaker 1: to not fall off or develop a nice post. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm not. I'm not. I get the impression
Speaker 1: that he molded it around whatever tooth was left so
Speaker 1: that he had more gripping power on That was my
Speaker 1: take on it. But but it did end up becoming like, um,
Speaker 1: I guess at the very least, it's noteworthy that he
Speaker 1: he kind of came up with the dental fillings, even
Speaker 1: if that wasn't the point of it. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: before I guess we break, we should mention this one
Speaker 1: more kind of fun fact. An ancient room for a
Speaker 1: for a mouth wash, they recommended rinsing the mouth with
Speaker 1: the first yurin of the morning, which everyone knows is
Speaker 1: the densest yellowest urine protein rich. So we are going
Speaker 1: to break now because I have that taste in my
Speaker 1: mouth thanks to you, urine. Yeah, I'm very very um suggestible.
Speaker 1: Have you ever drank your in? No, No, I can
Speaker 1: say that I never have. I think most people can
Speaker 1: say one way or the other. Right, Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a yes or no question. Yeah, yeah, I'm sort
Speaker 1: of a little bit. I haven't either. I was just
Speaker 1: I was just wondering, you never know. Yeah, well, it's
Speaker 1: good that after thirteen years we're still exploring one another.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a break and we'll be
Speaker 1: back right after this. So Chuck, we're back, and we're
Speaker 1: into the Middle Ages. Now. I don't know if anyone's
Speaker 1: caught onto this, but we're loosely organizing this. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: over the over the years, okay, and we've reached the
Speaker 1: Middle Age Middle Ages of Europe, I should say specifically,
Speaker 1: um and after Rome fell in so many ways. And
Speaker 1: of course we've talked about it before, but the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages are often called the Dark Ages. You're not even
Speaker 1: supposed to call them the Middle Ages because it makes
Speaker 1: the stuff that happened during this time inconsequential and it's
Speaker 1: just not the case. But it is true that, like
Speaker 1: the practice of dentistry really took a nose dive during
Speaker 1: this time. So this is actually a pretty good example
Speaker 1: of how human knowledge in um, well, the human knowledge
Speaker 1: of how to do things smartly really fell off for
Speaker 1: a little while had to be rediscovered, that's right. And
Speaker 1: it was around this time that physicians like they were
Speaker 1: something special back then. But the physician said, I'm not
Speaker 1: messing around with teeth, like the mouth is beneath me.
Speaker 1: Which is funny that that's still sort of a thing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true as far as like, uh, what movie was
Speaker 1: that the The Hangover when Ed Helms was a dentist
Speaker 1: and none of the doctors like them any respect, wasn't it? Um?
Speaker 1: Wasn't it on Seinfeld that George pretended to be a
Speaker 1: dentist for a little while? Was it? He pretended to
Speaker 1: be an architect? Right? But there was something about a
Speaker 1: dentist there. It was going to be like a dentist
Speaker 1: at first. Maybe I don't know. Well there was the
Speaker 1: dentist too, which was what's his face? Kranston, Tim Whatley,
Speaker 1: Tim Whatley, I don't know. It's I don't know. Okay,
Speaker 1: well there's something to pretend to be a dentist. Maybe
Speaker 1: the kid double cross the kid that George was sponsoring
Speaker 1: for the the Susan's Foundation was said he wanted to
Speaker 1: be an architect, and then when he takes him in
Speaker 1: there for the scholarship, he changes, he double crosses him
Speaker 1: and says he wants to be a dentist, and everybody
Speaker 1: laughed about how stupid architects are, even though Georgia an architect.
Speaker 1: I think we may have hammered it out here live
Speaker 1: on the episode. So if physicians did not pull teeth.
Speaker 1: That was left to a couple of other people professions.
Speaker 1: One was called a tooth drawer, uh, not a tooth drawer.
Speaker 1: And the first reference I found that this was Peter
Speaker 1: of London in thirteen twenty. Okay, you're a better researcher
Speaker 1: than I am. That's not true, but it is Chuck,
Speaker 1: at least in this case, it is very true because
Speaker 1: I tried. I looked high and low and did not
Speaker 1: turn that up to find them. Two drawers drawers from
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Well, I think they started in the
Speaker 1: thirteen hundreds, but I do think you're right in that
Speaker 1: they had their sort of apex probably in like the
Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen hundreds, because and we'll explain what they are.
Speaker 1: They are exactly the character that uh what's his face
Speaker 1: played in Christoph Waltz in Django unchained. Yes, when he
Speaker 1: played the dentist, he now he would have been he
Speaker 1: was kind of like a tooth drawer. No, he definitely was.
Speaker 1: He was. He was an itinerant dentist for sure. Um
Speaker 1: And yes, he he was like a more tooth drawer
Speaker 1: than what you would consider a dentist in today's standards.
Speaker 1: But I also have the impression that tooth drawers were
Speaker 1: way more like showman like, um, much less scrupulous and
Speaker 1: and like refined, and they were just kind of like
Speaker 1: well like Charlotte Charlottean's and actually the word Charlatan is
Speaker 1: the Italian for tooth drawer. Yeah, I thought that that's
Speaker 1: who that character was, though we just didn't get to
Speaker 1: see him practice that much. I see, I see, okay,
Speaker 1: because he wasn't doing dentistry in the movie, but he
Speaker 1: rolled through with that you know, big old tooth on
Speaker 1: the spring of his buggy, which is pretty fun. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure at the very least Tarantino, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of based it on this practice, which was they would
Speaker 1: come into town. They were sort of part entertainer, part um,
Speaker 1: not even part dentist, because what they really were were
Speaker 1: just people with enough uh verve to take pliers and
Speaker 1: yanka tooth out of somebody's mouth. Yeah, and they on
Speaker 1: a stage, yes, on a stage, and they would be
Speaker 1: surrounded by a band maybe depending on um, you know
Speaker 1: what errow we're talking about, they would uh might they
Speaker 1: might have jugglers and acrobats like they basically like surrounded
Speaker 1: themselves with a circus and the main attraction, the main
Speaker 1: event was the pulling of teeth, and it would just
Speaker 1: be like one after the other, come on up here.
Speaker 1: And that was a lot of times your only option,
Speaker 1: depending on where you lived, was to wait around for
Speaker 1: the tooth drawer to come along and hopefully pull your teeth,
Speaker 1: or again, like we talked about before, you might have
Speaker 1: somebody in town who was a blacksmith or a goldsmith
Speaker 1: um who would be willing to pull teeth and maybe
Speaker 1: even made like some sort of primitive dental appliances to
Speaker 1: to replace the pulled tooth what with, So you would
Speaker 1: go see him, they pull the tooth and then they
Speaker 1: put like a I don't know, an iron tooth in
Speaker 1: in its place or something like that. But that was
Speaker 1: your options for a very long time. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think the tooth drawer that you know, the purpose of
Speaker 1: the band was to distract people from the pain, the
Speaker 1: howling pain. So the band would they would literally tap
Speaker 1: on the stage louder for the band to play louder
Speaker 1: when it got more intense, and they would, you know,
Speaker 1: they would dope them up with like liquor or something,
Speaker 1: and part of it was to like pull teeth but
Speaker 1: not like, hey, I want to pull fifty teeth in
Speaker 1: this sound to make money. I think it was like
Speaker 1: fifty cents of tooth. It was mainly, I think, to
Speaker 1: sell the tonics and the salves and all that snake
Speaker 1: oil stuff that came along with it as well. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's where they get you. That's totally where they get you.
Speaker 1: Still where they get you. Yeah, so so okay, So
Speaker 1: tooth drawers were medieval, but that's really impressive that they
Speaker 1: lasted until the eighteenth century. They were They were around
Speaker 1: for a really long time. One of the problems was
Speaker 1: that not only were they Charlatan's like one of their techniques.
Speaker 1: When they came into town, the first person they would
Speaker 1: call on was like a plant who was working with
Speaker 1: them and would come up with like a tooth in
Speaker 1: their mouth already, and the dentists would pretend to just
Speaker 1: painlessly pull it, and they'd spit this tooth out and
Speaker 1: there you go. And then all of a sudden, everybody
Speaker 1: who actually did have tooth paint would be willing to
Speaker 1: come up on stage. They were hucksters. There were from
Speaker 1: what I saw, actual like legit ones who cared about
Speaker 1: people and wanted to ease suffering that Christoph Waltz is
Speaker 1: of the tooth drars, but there were plenty. For the
Speaker 1: most part, they were generally viewed as carneys, like you
Speaker 1: didn't you didn't you know, you didn't like talk openly
Speaker 1: about how much money you had in your wallet around
Speaker 1: him kind of thing. Right, Um, And you know, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this section we mentioned that there were
Speaker 1: a couple of types of people would do it because
Speaker 1: physicians wouldn't. The tooth roar was one, and then the
Speaker 1: barber surgeon was the other. If you've ever seen the
Speaker 1: great Saturday Night Live skit from years ago with Steve
Speaker 1: Martin as Theodoric of York, one of the great all
Speaker 1: time skits, I don't think i've seen that one. He
Speaker 1: was a barber and as you know, of course, everything
Speaker 1: that comes in there, and he's like, you just need
Speaker 1: a good bleeding, Like Bill Murray came men with both
Speaker 1: of his legs broken off and just blood everywhere, and
Speaker 1: he's like, you need a bleeding. He's like, I'm already bleeding. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. But um. Barbering was first introduced in
Speaker 1: Rome and about two nineties six, and they think that
Speaker 1: they got into dentistry some because they already had the tools,
Speaker 1: like sharp things basically. Uh. And eventually they would split.
Speaker 1: Barber surgeons would split up in seventy. But before that
Speaker 1: they were literally barbers and surgeons. They would cut hair
Speaker 1: and stuff and also cut you open if they needed to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But when they split off, it's not like the barber
Speaker 1: surgeons stopped cutting you open. They would still do limb amputations.
Speaker 1: They would do bleedings like blood lighting with leeches. They
Speaker 1: would do um, tooth pulling, um. And they would also
Speaker 1: shave you and give you a haircut. It was like
Speaker 1: the other stuff that the medical surgeons who went to
Speaker 1: the universities, the earlier universities for training, um, that's what
Speaker 1: they kind of kept as their own. They became the
Speaker 1: physicians where the barber surgeons were, you know, doing like
Speaker 1: stuff anybody could do, you know, like amputating a limb. Right,
Speaker 1: And the theodoric of York Bit is appropriate here because
Speaker 1: that's sort of what you know, the whole blood letting
Speaker 1: and bleeding thing was they were. They would bleed people
Speaker 1: for all kinds of things, including tooth pain. Um. They
Speaker 1: would say, you know, I think all the way up
Speaker 1: until like the first half of the eight hundreds. If
Speaker 1: you had a cavity or something, they would bleed you first,
Speaker 1: like first thing. It was just a matter of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Dave turned up UM. As late as nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: a guy named Charles Edmund Kells, who was respected for
Speaker 1: dentistry UM wrote a treatise on how to um put
Speaker 1: how to direct leeches to a specific spot on the gums,
Speaker 1: to that part of the gums. And I looked into
Speaker 1: my great astonishment, Chuck, we have not done an episode
Speaker 1: on leeches, and by god, we are going to do
Speaker 1: an episode. Really. I know. We didn't want to medical leeches, right,
Speaker 1: we did a bizarre medical treatments episode and that was
Speaker 1: in there, and it was in there, but I mean
Speaker 1: it's perfect. It's like weird medical stuff animal episode. It's
Speaker 1: got it all. It's yeah to the movie leeches. Gotta
Speaker 1: talk about stand by me? Oh yeah, yeah, that movie,
Speaker 1: but also leeches too. Was there a movie called Leeches?
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was. And I think I had an
Speaker 1: exclamation exclamation point. Well, I'll tell you what. If there's
Speaker 1: not that movie, we'll do that movie too, Okay, like
Speaker 1: we'll make it ourselves. Yeah, starring us, written directed by us.
Speaker 1: The whole deal. This sounds awesome. We could we could
Speaker 1: just go back and use our This Day in History
Speaker 1: series and just dub in new dialogue and call it
Speaker 1: as right. Um. So the tools that they would use,
Speaker 1: this is where I went to that Georgian All Things
Speaker 1: Georgian website. There were all kinds of things. It was
Speaker 1: something called a dental pelican. All these were sort of
Speaker 1: versions of forceps. At the end of the day. Uh,
Speaker 1: the pelican looks I was sort of like ice tongs,
Speaker 1: like for big blocks of ice. I couldn't make heads
Speaker 1: or tails of how it used. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean there's something called a dental key, which um could
Speaker 1: be used to either lever out your tooth or just
Speaker 1: break it into pieces. That was the one that made
Speaker 1: me feel first faint. So George the Third's operator for
Speaker 1: the teeth, Thomas Bird Moore, uh wrote some stuff in
Speaker 1: his Tristas on the disorders and Deformities of the teeth
Speaker 1: and gums in seventeen seventy and he talked about this
Speaker 1: lady that came in that had, you know, had a
Speaker 1: bad tooth that needed to be pulled. One of our
Speaker 1: upper molars and he said that after some work, he
Speaker 1: brought away the affected tooth together with a piece of
Speaker 1: jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighboring molars. Lord. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was I'm glad you said that. I ran
Speaker 1: into that all over the place. One of the problems
Speaker 1: with pre trained dentistry, um, where there was like actual
Speaker 1: like science based treatments and stuff like that when you
Speaker 1: had your tooth pulled, like there was a really good
Speaker 1: chance that a chunk of the bone and like your
Speaker 1: your jaw was going to come out along with it
Speaker 1: because they didn't know what they were doing, and um,
Speaker 1: like do you could die from it? Like a lot
Speaker 1: of people actually died from an infection that was brought
Speaker 1: on by a badly pulled tooth, a botched tooth tooth drawing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is um. I mean, it's sad, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny too because it was so long ago. But
Speaker 1: the Bill of mortality in London in sixteen, Uh what
Speaker 1: the number five cause of death on the bill of mortality?
Speaker 1: It was just teeth, That's all you need to say.
Speaker 1: That's it. They were apparently a hundred and eleven people
Speaker 1: in London died from infections in one week, um, brought
Speaker 1: on by botch dental dental pullings. Again, we don't mean
Speaker 1: to be laughing, but uh, comedy is tragedy perfect plus time. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you mean. I've got one that's
Speaker 1: coming up that I just can't help. Okay, So we
Speaker 1: finally have reached that eighteenth century where that's interestingly, that's
Speaker 1: the heyday of the tooth drawers that we described, like
Speaker 1: where they roll into town with like a circus around
Speaker 1: him and everything. The early eighteenth century was when they
Speaker 1: were really doing that up. Um. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: this is also the origin of dentistry as we understand
Speaker 1: it today, like modern dentistry. And there are two guys
Speaker 1: that are typically pointed to as the um the fathers
Speaker 1: of dentistry. One is a Frenchman named Pierre Fauchard, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the other is that an American named green Vardamin Black,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty cool name. G BB. Yeah, two
Speaker 1: colors in your name, that is impressive. You don't see
Speaker 1: that very often. Like his name is Green Black, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. Well, you just heard his
Speaker 1: name recently. You know what you get when you mixed
Speaker 1: green and black, like black I think black, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you could just call him black. So Pierre Fourchard
Speaker 1: he uh. He pioneered a lot of things. But one
Speaker 1: of the funny things that you never really think about
Speaker 1: as far as an advancement was literally just putting people
Speaker 1: in an armchair to work on them. Apparently before then
Speaker 1: they would lay people on the floor and I guess
Speaker 1: get on their knees. The dentist would and put their
Speaker 1: head between their knees and like hold it between their
Speaker 1: knees and thighs to keep it steady because it was
Speaker 1: such an awful thing. Yes, I mean that that was dentistry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it really was like cutting edge to be like,
Speaker 1: how about you just make yourself comfortable in this chair
Speaker 1: and I'll stand under you instead and me comfortable, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't the extent of Fouchard's contributions. He was
Speaker 1: the first to to create like evidence based treatments. Um,
Speaker 1: he didn't. He just kind of pooh pooed the idea
Speaker 1: of just following tradition. He felt tradition was probably not
Speaker 1: so great and he wanted to do a apply science
Speaker 1: and and um ration rationalism, I guess to the to
Speaker 1: the whole pursuit of treating people's teeth problems. Um. He
Speaker 1: also got really good at um creating um like prosthetics
Speaker 1: like dentures and things like that that he would string together. Um.
Speaker 1: He also was um known for introducing a lot of
Speaker 1: the dental tools. I don't know if he invented all
Speaker 1: of them, but he he organized and categorized him and
Speaker 1: basically his treatise, I think it was a two volume
Speaker 1: work that spanned eight hundred pages, basically set down like
Speaker 1: here's how you be like a legitimate dentist, seventeen fifties style.
Speaker 1: And a lot of his his observations were so um
Speaker 1: they were just accurate that they still hold hold true today.
Speaker 1: Although I've seen his his work as being described as primitive,
Speaker 1: but he was. That's what pioneers do, They produced accurate
Speaker 1: primitive work. What about green Black? Was he basically in
Speaker 1: the same out. I didn't see a lot about him.
Speaker 1: I didn't do a lot of research on green Black.
Speaker 1: I just saw that both of them tend to be
Speaker 1: tied together as they kind of split that um that
Speaker 1: that name is the father. Yeah. I saw much more
Speaker 1: on Fochard. Uh should we take a break now, all right?
Speaker 1: We'll take a break and we'll talk about anesthetics and toothbrushes, toothpaste,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff right after this. So, now, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we finally reached the point where dentistry doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be the worst thing that ever happened to you in
Speaker 1: your entire life? Then why is it the worst thing
Speaker 1: that happens to me? Be as you're failing to imagine
Speaker 1: how bad it could be? All right, I got you. Well,
Speaker 1: like we should thank our lucky stars that we were
Speaker 1: born into an era where there's such a thing as
Speaker 1: an anesthetics. Yeah, I mean they did their best back
Speaker 1: in the day. Like we mentioned earlier, they were using plants,
Speaker 1: they're using night shades, they're using opium, hashish, uh, kind
Speaker 1: of whatever they could get their hands on to make
Speaker 1: people feel a little better while you're doing this horrific
Speaker 1: stuff party at the dentist's office. That's right, Uh, you
Speaker 1: would use That's still the best part of when I
Speaker 1: get my implants. You know that like twelve seconds of
Speaker 1: bliss of what do you get? Do they give you
Speaker 1: nitrous twilight sleep? Okay, wow, that's good stuff. Huh And
Speaker 1: with that huh, yeah, you get the I V and
Speaker 1: about eight seconds of you know, the best part of
Speaker 1: your week, and then you wake up in your mouth
Speaker 1: is a little sore, like when you're when you're counting backwards.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh man, they know I'm totally wasted. I know,
Speaker 1: and they're making fun of me. Uh so sleep Sponges
Speaker 1: was another thing they used. They would soak sponges in
Speaker 1: him luck again, opium, man drake whatever they had, and
Speaker 1: then dry it out in the sun and then it
Speaker 1: was just kind of there at your disposal, and when
Speaker 1: you wanted to use it, you would just activate it
Speaker 1: by dipping it in some water, put under their nostrils
Speaker 1: and there you go, goodbye, good night. Um. I also
Speaker 1: didn't know this, and apparently a lot of people don't,
Speaker 1: because I saw it mentioned here there, but nobody seemed
Speaker 1: to have much detail about it. But ether Um, which
Speaker 1: I squarely placed in the nineteenth century, as far as
Speaker 1: anti sex go, was usually known to humans from the
Speaker 1: twelve hundreds. I didn't know that. Yeah, there was an
Speaker 1: alchemist named Raymond Lollis or Raman Lowly. He was Spanish,
Speaker 1: but he was an alchemist, and he somehow stumbled onto
Speaker 1: ether I could not get the details, but he saw that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is really good at painkilling. He called it sweet vitriol.
Speaker 1: But um, apparently it was just lost. The knowledge was
Speaker 1: lost to Stree for about five six years, which is
Speaker 1: that's an example of why the Middle Ages or that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be called the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: like that was a discovery. It's just that at the
Speaker 1: time everybody was too stupid to spread that information. I guess, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally in the seventeen seventies we come upon
Speaker 1: one of the greatest discoveries, nitrous oxide, which is so
Speaker 1: great we did a whole episode on it, so we
Speaker 1: don't really need to go over all of this again.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I don't even know if
Speaker 1: we mentioned back then, because I feel like I would
Speaker 1: have remembered this. But one of the young scientists early
Speaker 1: on who was practicing with it, named Humphrey Davy, uh,
Speaker 1: would put it in a sack to huff and he
Speaker 1: called them paradise bags. What a great name. I think
Speaker 1: I remember saying that. Well, there were you know, the
Speaker 1: long and short of nitris is it sort of came
Speaker 1: and went over the years with various successful demonstrations in
Speaker 1: front of groups of doctors in Dennis, so I'm not
Speaker 1: so successful in front of big groups, and so it
Speaker 1: kind of ebbed and flowed in popularity as a result. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Horace Wells um famously botched the demonstration that set um
Speaker 1: nitrous oxide back a good twenty years basically, but a
Speaker 1: couple of years after that, one of his students, UM W. T. G. Morton, said, Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: you thought nitrous oxide was something, check out ether And
Speaker 1: he introduced ether um through a demonstration and showed how
Speaker 1: somebody could have a tumor removed without even batting an eyelash,
Speaker 1: and everybody was like, Okay, this ether is pretty good.
Speaker 1: So either ether sotoaked rags were a UM for a
Speaker 1: very long time and anesthetic used in surgery but also
Speaker 1: dentistry too. And then laughing gas kind of UM came
Speaker 1: back about like twenty years after wells is botched demonstration.
Speaker 1: So by the late nineteenth century, the mid late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: UM we had two very powerful anesthetics that just completely
Speaker 1: changed the course of dentistry and I think allowed people
Speaker 1: to start being like, Okay, I'll I'm willing to start
Speaker 1: like actually going to see a dentist now if they've
Speaker 1: got this stuff to offer, right, and so they said,
Speaker 1: you know it would be even better is if we
Speaker 1: gave them cocaine. Uh. And there was a dentist, an
Speaker 1: American named William Stewart Halstead, who was the first person.
Speaker 1: I guess you know, they noticed, hey, when we're when
Speaker 1: we're taking this stuff and we put it in our mouth,
Speaker 1: it makes our mouth numb. So maybe we can use
Speaker 1: it for dentistry. Right, and so somebody this in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: that's right, and they're like, oh god, this's got such
Speaker 1: a bore. Uh, they injected He was the first one
Speaker 1: to inject it into the patient's gum and jaw for
Speaker 1: pain relief. And so that, you know, following that forward,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of cocaine based toothache remedies. Obviously, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, cocaine had the dark side, so uh, they
Speaker 1: placed it with new cocaine or no vocane and some
Speaker 1: other you know, non addictive pain relievers. But for a
Speaker 1: while there, cocaine was certainly used in dentistry. Yeah. Apparently
Speaker 1: Halsted said that he lost three assistance to cocaine addiction.
Speaker 1: And Dave puts like they actually died and I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, like I can just imagine Halstead like hearing
Speaker 1: like a thump in the other room and just being
Speaker 1: like another one. Can you just imagine like losing three
Speaker 1: of your assistance to overdose deaths from cocaine, shooting up
Speaker 1: cocaine and and like you're just trying to do your
Speaker 1: dentistry practice. And then he threw him in his convertible
Speaker 1: and drove him over to Eric Stoltz's house, right, and
Speaker 1: it all worked out. Man. We got pop culture flying
Speaker 1: all over the place today too. Uh So, now we're
Speaker 1: at toothbrushes and toothpaste sort of a little more in
Speaker 1: earnest in that they you know, we kind of talked
Speaker 1: about the ancient stuff that they would use these tree
Speaker 1: um uh wigs and stuff like that. Gwyneth Paltrow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow. Um, they they would use cloth. I think
Speaker 1: the Queen of England use cloth and toothpicks until the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century. Basically any kind of um manufacturing process
Speaker 1: kind of didn't make it affordable to even make regular toothbrushes,
Speaker 1: so it's cloth and sponge and rinses and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But I think they eventually worked out the toothbrush and
Speaker 1: they needed something to put on the toothbrush, at which
Speaker 1: point they said, how about just some really strong uh
Speaker 1: scrubbing what's the word I'm looking for? Bubbles? No, like,
Speaker 1: what's the power? Like an abrace of powder, and they
Speaker 1: use stuff like crushed coral and pumice, but that would
Speaker 1: ruin your teeth after a few weeks really quickly, and
Speaker 1: so um toothpaste came along, and it's still followed that
Speaker 1: same pattern where apparently the earliest incarnations of pepsodent had
Speaker 1: um something that was it was an abrasive that you
Speaker 1: could actually cut glass with. And there was another one,
Speaker 1: another toothpaste called tartar Off, that had hydrochloric acid in it.
Speaker 1: Tartar Off for sure, I mean it would make your
Speaker 1: teeth white, for sure, but then it would eventually wear
Speaker 1: them down to nubs in like a few months. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it took a while to kind of um
Speaker 1: find the right balance between protecting the teeth and cleaning
Speaker 1: the teeth at the same time. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: there's still abrasives in your toothpaste today. They've just gotten
Speaker 1: a lot better at getting it just the right amount
Speaker 1: so that, yeah, it doesn't wear your enamel down baking
Speaker 1: soda and stuff like that, right, yeah, And I ran
Speaker 1: across something and I think the A d A website.
Speaker 1: Um that in America, toothpaste and brushing your teeth in
Speaker 1: general did not become widespread. It wasn't like the norm
Speaker 1: until after World War Two. And it was because American
Speaker 1: g i's returned from Europe saying, hey, it's crazy. Everybody
Speaker 1: over in Europe has like actually like nice breath and
Speaker 1: this is how they do it. And that's when it
Speaker 1: really took off from what I and yeah, very cool,
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It is cool in a way, but
Speaker 1: also like wow in another way, like these are my
Speaker 1: grandparents were talking about. Right, Uh, the greatest generation, that's right,
Speaker 1: the greatest generation. Uh. We can dispel the myth that
Speaker 1: George Washington had wooden teeth. Uh, he had terrible teeth
Speaker 1: and he had a really bad time with his teeth. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he did have fake teeth, but they were I
Speaker 1: think the bases were made from ivory and tusk and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but the human the teeth were actually
Speaker 1: human teeth. They were from We talked about grave robbing
Speaker 1: in the live episode that we did. They would grave
Speaker 1: rob for teeth. Good teeth. They would people poor people
Speaker 1: that had decent teeth would sell their teeth for money.
Speaker 1: They actually documented that he paid his slaves for teeth, which,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you're like, oh, that's pretty cool
Speaker 1: he actually paid his slaves rather than said, go bring
Speaker 1: me some of my slaves teeth. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I was reading about it and they were like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter really what he paid him, unless it was
Speaker 1: just some eye popping amount. It's still like it's an
Speaker 1: inherently inequitable transaction. But um, I do feel bad for
Speaker 1: George Washington in that. Um he he apparently kind of
Speaker 1: suffered with his teeth. Like, there's nobody, especially in America,
Speaker 1: whose teeth have ever been talked about and written about
Speaker 1: more than George Washington. You are a close second, but
Speaker 1: he's definitely the first, first place winner. And um he
Speaker 1: apparently one of the reasons why he wore dentures and
Speaker 1: like kind of suffered through this and and and insisted
Speaker 1: on wearing them all the time was because his he
Speaker 1: was the face of this new nation. He was the
Speaker 1: first president, right and at the time it was it
Speaker 1: was um his vitality, his health, his strength was basically
Speaker 1: the same as the nation's health and strength, and so
Speaker 1: for him to show any kind of weakness or problem
Speaker 1: or disease or anything like that would make people wonder like, oh,
Speaker 1: does that also mean that this new American experiment is
Speaker 1: also diseased and problem as problems And so in a
Speaker 1: way like he really kind of carried this burden for
Speaker 1: the country, for the image of the country. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: his teeth are he had like no teeth by the
Speaker 1: time he was fifty one. They all fell out, and
Speaker 1: they started falling out when he was in his early twenties.
Speaker 1: I was talking to you because I was like, we've
Speaker 1: seen his teeth, and I thought we both actually thought
Speaker 1: that maybe we saw it at the the Memorial Masonic
Speaker 1: Temple and in Old Town Alexandria. But I don't think
Speaker 1: they're there. So we think we saw him in Mountain
Speaker 1: Vernon because supposedly that's where they are. But both of
Speaker 1: us remember seeing them at that Masonic Temple. I've been
Speaker 1: to Mount Vernon a couple of times. I don't remember
Speaker 1: seeing his teeth, So I wonder if we did see
Speaker 1: his teeth at the Masonic Temple and they moved into
Speaker 1: Mountain Vernon and now I'm looking on the internet. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: they're at Mountain Vernon. Silly. Maybe it was a museum
Speaker 1: of sex. They had George Washington's chattering teeth. So now
Speaker 1: we move on to X rays, which were discovered in
Speaker 1: by German scientists. They started using those on the mouth
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, but a thing kind of popped up early
Speaker 1: on that it ended up being bad and that they
Speaker 1: didn't really know how to read X rays that well,
Speaker 1: at least probably everywhere at first, but at least around
Speaker 1: the mouth. And they discovered these things a condition when
Speaker 1: they would take the teeth in the jaw X rays
Speaker 1: where they would find pockets of infection under the gum line,
Speaker 1: which now we just know are I mean, what is
Speaker 1: that just pockets of infection pus mouth pus. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: They called them focal infections. And the problem is is,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good thing that they spotted these,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know what they were, so they linked
Speaker 1: it to other stuff and other organs of the bodies,
Speaker 1: sometimes the brain even, and it become it became almost
Speaker 1: like a new version of blood letting in that for
Speaker 1: a while, if you had almost anything going wrong with you,
Speaker 1: sometimes and they showed, uh, these these pockets on the
Speaker 1: X ray. They would just pull your teeth like if
Speaker 1: you had a kidney disorder, they would pull your teeth first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a guy who was apparently one of the
Speaker 1: leading proponents and practitioners of this focal infection hysteria. His
Speaker 1: name was Henry Cotton. He worked at the New Jersey
Speaker 1: State Lunatic Asylum is what they called at the time,
Speaker 1: between nineteen oh seven and nineteen thirty and he he
Speaker 1: and his team pulled eleven thousand human teeth during that time,
Speaker 1: including his own teeth, his wife's teeth, his children's teeth,
Speaker 1: but mostly inmates of this asylum. And the idea was
Speaker 1: that that infection had gone to your brain, so you
Speaker 1: had to pull the teeth out around it to treat
Speaker 1: the infection to cure your mental illness. And it just
Speaker 1: so happens, Chuck, that our good friend, our dear friend,
Speaker 1: beloved friend, John Hodgman played that man on the TV
Speaker 1: show of the Nick Oh, that's true, was that his character? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy existed in real life Hodgman's character and I
Speaker 1: read I came across a mention of it in Paste
Speaker 1: magazine said that um Hodgman played Henry Cotton quote with
Speaker 1: perfect offhand authority. I think it's one. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't remember that he was playing Henry Cotton, this guy
Speaker 1: who was just pulling eleven thousand teeth from people over
Speaker 1: twenty three years to cure their mental illness, which is nuts,
Speaker 1: but it actually happened. You have to text him let
Speaker 1: him know we were talking about his acting career. I will.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he'll hear it when this comes out. He
Speaker 1: listens to every episode. The moment that really doesn't, someone
Speaker 1: will let him know. Uh. And then we wind out
Speaker 1: to kind of a guy who um weirdly ended up
Speaker 1: being uh for the wrong reasons, the person who changed
Speaker 1: dentistry for the better, and that he was not a
Speaker 1: good dentist. And he was came along at a time
Speaker 1: when the a d A had just formed in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. They met at Niagara Falls formed the a
Speaker 1: d A in eighteen sixty six. They said, you can't
Speaker 1: use you can't be a snake oil salesman anymore. You
Speaker 1: can't have these advertisements and personally solicit uh business like
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta kind of put ourselves up there
Speaker 1: with the doctors guys and not do this stuff. And
Speaker 1: a dude came along that defied all that so much
Speaker 1: so that they really started to sort of codify and
Speaker 1: put that stuff in the rear view mirror. Well, they
Speaker 1: were trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves from
Speaker 1: just people who pulled teeth for a living but didn't
Speaker 1: go to dental school. And it's hard to do that, um.
Speaker 1: And they a way to do that is defined a
Speaker 1: scapegoat and point out how terrible they are, to to
Speaker 1: use them as an example of how great you are,
Speaker 1: right to make yourselves look good. And that's what they
Speaker 1: did with this guy, Edgar Randolph Painless Parker, who was
Speaker 1: very much as snake oil salesman, a charlatan. He was
Speaker 1: of the m of the kind of dentists that he
Speaker 1: actually did go to dental school. But he he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm losing money to these these tooth pullers, these tooth drawers,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna start advertising again, and I think while
Speaker 1: I'm at it all, start making sneak coil and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Um. But he was of the school where
Speaker 1: you would just like fill a tooth um with a
Speaker 1: like like amalgam, say mercury or something like that. And um,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get rid of any of the decay, well
Speaker 1: you would, your face would still rot off regardless. But yes,
Speaker 1: your dental visit was painless because they didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: scrape out any of the cavity to start. Um, that's
Speaker 1: who they were competing against. So they used this guy
Speaker 1: to basically say all this stuff. This guy is doing.
Speaker 1: This guy right here, that's not dentistry. Come over here.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is actual dentistry. It's going to help
Speaker 1: your health. Yeah, and he like, like you said, he
Speaker 1: went to dental school. He went to the Philadelphia Dental College,
Speaker 1: but apparently he literally did not pass, like he would
Speaker 1: not have earned a degree had he not gone, and
Speaker 1: begged the dan to let him through. And I guess
Speaker 1: he sounds like sort of a squeaky wheel kind and
Speaker 1: I think they just wanted to be rid of him,
Speaker 1: so they said, fine, here's your degree. And so that's
Speaker 1: when he went to Canada and sat in an empty
Speaker 1: office because he couldn't he wasn't losing, like patients were
Speaker 1: coming and leaving, like he didn't have any patients to
Speaker 1: begin with. And um, so yeah, he started doing the
Speaker 1: snake whole thing, and he literally went back in time
Speaker 1: to become like a dental drawer and had these big
Speaker 1: sort of tooth pulling events and parties with the band
Speaker 1: just like they were in the heyday in the early
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, same same exact thing. Unbelievable. He also supposedly
Speaker 1: wore a necklace of three hundred and fifty seven extracted
Speaker 1: teeth that he supposedly pulled all in one day, which
Speaker 1: is what I made for a good live show. Oh well,
Speaker 1: let's save it. I don't think so this is all
Speaker 1: the makings of a great live show. Well, there's a
Speaker 1: whole thing. I agreed. There's a whole thing that we
Speaker 1: didn't even get to talk about called the amalgam Wars,
Speaker 1: which I think we're going to do with short stuff
Speaker 1: on because it was pretty interesting too. All right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm up. I'm up for it. So that's if for
Speaker 1: now for the history of dentistry. This may be an
Speaker 1: ongoing thing. Who knows? And uh, since I said this
Speaker 1: may be an ongoing thing, who knows? It's time of
Speaker 1: course for listener mail, I'm gonna call this I missed
Speaker 1: opportunity for a pavement reference. Oh yeah, I saw this one.
Speaker 1: Did you see this? This is from Alan Coleman, and
Speaker 1: this is about the Salem witch Trials. And I can't
Speaker 1: believe I walked right past this because this this is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite Pavement songs. He said, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love the podcast. I'm not one of those the chairs
Speaker 1: being able to send into correction, so this isn't one
Speaker 1: of those. I listened to Salem Witchcraft Trials and notice
Speaker 1: an unexpected omission being a big pavement in Silver Jeice Fan.
Speaker 1: For the majority of my life, I enjoy hearing your
Speaker 1: references occasionally. So I saw the title and I knew
Speaker 1: that you had mentioned the Pavement song Give It a Day,
Speaker 1: which is about Increase and Cotton Mather. Uh good work.
Speaker 1: Stay alert for those possible Pavement references. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read the first verse of that song because I know
Speaker 1: this song and it never really occurred to me. That's
Speaker 1: why I didn't get the ref in the episode. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of the most pavement of all Pavement songs, Uh.
Speaker 1: Increased mother told her dad. By the way he says
Speaker 1: her dad, I roundly disagree with you. Your vocals styles
Speaker 1: too preachy, and the yokels mock your teaching, but Cotton
Speaker 1: he was just so oblivious to all their cutting. Please.
Speaker 1: Soon the town folk took to it, and every pew
Speaker 1: they looked to him for guidance, just like eyeless lambs
Speaker 1: awaiting that old kebab. Stand the skeptics formed the nation's born.
Speaker 1: They want to have it Cotton's dream, but Increase had
Speaker 1: them mounted and they burned on open fires. So the
Speaker 1: words spread, just like smallpox in the Sudan, and the
Speaker 1: gentry cried, give it a day, Give it a day,
Speaker 1: Give it a day. That sounds pretty pavement. You're You're right,
Speaker 1: it's even when you listen to it, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like Steve Malcomus. It is most words, smithy working all
Speaker 1: those words in there album. Uh. I think that was
Speaker 1: from an EP If I'm not mistaken, it wasn't on
Speaker 1: a regular LP. I've definitely not heard that one, but
Speaker 1: thanks to Alan Coleman for that. I walked right past
Speaker 1: that way to go to Bob in Nostanovitch. If you're
Speaker 1: listening there, you go, uh, Well, if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with this like Alan did, or if
Speaker 1: you want to say hi and you're Bob Nostandovitch Chuck
Speaker 1: always likes hearing from you, Bob, Please right in. You
Speaker 1: can get in touch with this via email at stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.