British Dental Association Museum, London
Every now and then the newspapers treat us to a list of the 'top' something-or-other - the world's 100 richest people, the top ten sexiest actors, and so on. For some reason one never usually sees a list of the top ten sexiest chartered accountants or the world's 100 poorest people.
As far as museums are concerned, a similar comparison might be drawn between a fantasy 'top ten' of world collections and the great mass of minor or local museums that are dedicated to one person, topic or place.
Well up among the strangest of these specialised museums might be the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard and perhaps many of us would also want to include the British Dental Association (BDA) Museum in central London.
Despite modern anaesthetics, a fear of going to the dentist is almost universal, not helped by fictional dental torture scenes such as those in the 1976 film Marathon Man.
The collection proper was begun in 1919 by the BDA's then honorary librarian, Lilian Lindsay, one of the first women dentists. She had started to collect certain older dental artefacts, which she later donated to the BDA.
These, together with a bequest from George Cunningham, a pioneer of preventive dentistry, who had died in 1919, form the nucleus of the museum. The collection has now grown to about 30,000 objects - although many of these must be teeth.
A recent £8,600 grant from the Wellcome Trust has allowed the scanning of the Cunningham collection of photographic material recording the early days of preventive dentistry. This includes Pathé brothers footage of Cunningham exhorting a troop of boy scouts to clean their teeth and advising nursing mothers to breastfeed their babies instead of rotting their milk teeth with formula.
Until this autumn, the dental museum was rather tucked away within the BDA headquarters at 64 Wimpole Street, London. As a result of recent refurbishment work at the building, which dates from the 1960s, the museum has surrendered 50 per cent of its floor area but benefited from a new location by the front doors, visible from the street.
It is only open two afternoons a week at the moment, or at other times by application to the curator. Many items in the collection have to go into storage: smaller objects near-at-hand; larger artefacts, such as dentist's chairs, offsite.
The items presently on display are mainly from the 19th century and deal with the rise of the use of technology in dental treatment. By the early 1800s, many better-off people had no teeth, as they were able to afford both sugary things to eat and dentistry to remove carious teeth, with the help of the horrible-looking pliers also on show.
These patients were in the market for primitive sets of false teeth, made from ivory, the teeth of the recently dead, or, by about 1790, occasionally from porcelain.
The battlefield of Waterloo provided rich pickings for the tooth harvesters, who gathered teeth from the recently slain. Other display cases show sections through skulls, revealing the anatomy of the jaw and the growth of teeth.
Early dental drills are also exhibited, ranging from a hand drill, which must have been both almost useless and exceedingly painful, to a beautifully- made and highly-polished clockwork mid-19th century device. Once wound up, it would allow just two minutes of drilling time, but was so bulky that it must have impeded the dentist's view.
The great leap forward in terms of preparation of cavities was in a combination of new technologies in about 1871. Flexible power drives and an adaptation of sewing-machine technology lent new sophistication to drilling. With a foot-treadle and a bit of practice, the dentist could keep a high-speed drilling bit in the cavity while simultaneously seeing what he was doing.
Having prepared the cavity, the next problem for the Victorian dentist was the filling agent. Mercury amalgam came into use in the 1830s, but controversy over its properties led to the 'amalgam wars', a transatlantic conflict that lasted until around 1890. 'American' dentistry was already famous in the 19th century, and many London dentists advertised that they would perform these techniques.
Another exhibit at the dental museum is an early form of corrective orthodontic device: those who find wearing a discreet in-mouth brace difficult enough might baulk at having to use a gadget that embraces the whole head.
My visit happened to coincide with that of a cohort of young dentists, in their post-university training phase. They were highly interested in the plush late Victorian patient's chair, upholstered in red velvet rather than the blue PVC of current versions. A luxurious fitted wooden showcase of dental instruments also attracted them; the implements have handles variously of mother-of-pearl or ivory.
The dental museum is seeking to expand its educational activities, but not in the direction of school audiences. Such a small, highly specialised, museum can really only cater for small numbers of visitors at any one time. They want to get all dental trainees in through their doors, as well as groups from higher and continuing education establishments.
The majority of those young dentists will go on to be private practitioners, for the provision of dentistry through the National Health Service, a cornerstone of Aneurin Bevin's radical scheme for universal healthcare in 1951, is now apparently in freefall.
Stories of would-be patients queuing for days to register with a rare NHS dentist make headline news. And the next generation of dentists will have student debts running into tens of thousands of pounds to repay.
That these issues are not addressed at the museum suggests a professional but disquieting detachment between teeth and the people who own them - or treat them.
David Brady teaches at the University of London
Project data
Cost: £15,000
Main funder: British Dental Association
Museum design: Objectives
Every now and then the newspapers treat us to a list of the 'top' something-or-other - the world's 100 richest people, the top ten sexiest actors, and so on. For some reason one never usually sees a list of the top ten sexiest chartered accountants or the world's 100 poorest people.
As far as museums are concerned, a similar comparison might be drawn between a fantasy 'top ten' of world collections and the great mass of minor or local museums that are dedicated to one person, topic or place.
Well up among the strangest of these specialised museums might be the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard and perhaps many of us would also want to include the British Dental Association (BDA) Museum in central London.
Despite modern anaesthetics, a fear of going to the dentist is almost universal, not helped by fictional dental torture scenes such as those in the 1976 film Marathon Man.
The collection proper was begun in 1919 by the BDA's then honorary librarian, Lilian Lindsay, one of the first women dentists. She had started to collect certain older dental artefacts, which she later donated to the BDA.
These, together with a bequest from George Cunningham, a pioneer of preventive dentistry, who had died in 1919, form the nucleus of the museum. The collection has now grown to about 30,000 objects - although many of these must be teeth.
A recent £8,600 grant from the Wellcome Trust has allowed the scanning of the Cunningham collection of photographic material recording the early days of preventive dentistry. This includes Pathé brothers footage of Cunningham exhorting a troop of boy scouts to clean their teeth and advising nursing mothers to breastfeed their babies instead of rotting their milk teeth with formula.
Until this autumn, the dental museum was rather tucked away within the BDA headquarters at 64 Wimpole Street, London. As a result of recent refurbishment work at the building, which dates from the 1960s, the museum has surrendered 50 per cent of its floor area but benefited from a new location by the front doors, visible from the street.
It is only open two afternoons a week at the moment, or at other times by application to the curator. Many items in the collection have to go into storage: smaller objects near-at-hand; larger artefacts, such as dentist's chairs, offsite.
The items presently on display are mainly from the 19th century and deal with the rise of the use of technology in dental treatment. By the early 1800s, many better-off people had no teeth, as they were able to afford both sugary things to eat and dentistry to remove carious teeth, with the help of the horrible-looking pliers also on show.
These patients were in the market for primitive sets of false teeth, made from ivory, the teeth of the recently dead, or, by about 1790, occasionally from porcelain.
The battlefield of Waterloo provided rich pickings for the tooth harvesters, who gathered teeth from the recently slain. Other display cases show sections through skulls, revealing the anatomy of the jaw and the growth of teeth.
Early dental drills are also exhibited, ranging from a hand drill, which must have been both almost useless and exceedingly painful, to a beautifully- made and highly-polished clockwork mid-19th century device. Once wound up, it would allow just two minutes of drilling time, but was so bulky that it must have impeded the dentist's view.
The great leap forward in terms of preparation of cavities was in a combination of new technologies in about 1871. Flexible power drives and an adaptation of sewing-machine technology lent new sophistication to drilling. With a foot-treadle and a bit of practice, the dentist could keep a high-speed drilling bit in the cavity while simultaneously seeing what he was doing.
Having prepared the cavity, the next problem for the Victorian dentist was the filling agent. Mercury amalgam came into use in the 1830s, but controversy over its properties led to the 'amalgam wars', a transatlantic conflict that lasted until around 1890. 'American' dentistry was already famous in the 19th century, and many London dentists advertised that they would perform these techniques.
Another exhibit at the dental museum is an early form of corrective orthodontic device: those who find wearing a discreet in-mouth brace difficult enough might baulk at having to use a gadget that embraces the whole head.
My visit happened to coincide with that of a cohort of young dentists, in their post-university training phase. They were highly interested in the plush late Victorian patient's chair, upholstered in red velvet rather than the blue PVC of current versions. A luxurious fitted wooden showcase of dental instruments also attracted them; the implements have handles variously of mother-of-pearl or ivory.
The dental museum is seeking to expand its educational activities, but not in the direction of school audiences. Such a small, highly specialised, museum can really only cater for small numbers of visitors at any one time. They want to get all dental trainees in through their doors, as well as groups from higher and continuing education establishments.
The majority of those young dentists will go on to be private practitioners, for the provision of dentistry through the National Health Service, a cornerstone of Aneurin Bevin's radical scheme for universal healthcare in 1951, is now apparently in freefall.
Stories of would-be patients queuing for days to register with a rare NHS dentist make headline news. And the next generation of dentists will have student debts running into tens of thousands of pounds to repay.
That these issues are not addressed at the museum suggests a professional but disquieting detachment between teeth and the people who own them - or treat them.
David Brady teaches at the University of London
Project data
Cost: £15,000
Main funder: British Dental Association
Museum design: Objectives
