Memories of the dentist in the 1950s

When it’s your turn to visit the dentist and lose a tooth it still pretty much comes down to a dentist and a pair of pliers.

That said it isn’t the awful passage of terror that I remember it as a child.
And that is the theme for today.

My dentist was all that I could ask for.
He calmly talked me through the process, breaking down each part of the minor operation and was clear about how long it would all take.

This was all to the good given that I was there for two extractions and a filling.

And in the course of the conversation he made one very interesting observation and that was that it is the generation now in their 50s and 60s who tend to be the most nervous, and that chimed in with me.

We were  the first children to experience dental care on the NHS and as good as the NHS was some at least of the practices of the period have left their mark.

It began I remember in the waiting room of what had once been a part of the local work house.

The brick walls had long ago been painted in a mix of green and cream but there was no mistaking that this was a 19th century building, with stone floors and wooden benches.

And when it came to the extractions there was first the application of the gas with the leather and rubber mask.  This was effective I have to say, but even now I can recall slowly coming round feeling sick as everything in front of your eyes rolled and tumbled like a set of dice.

Not that I have any compliant about the actual care which certainly at the school dentists clinic was excellent.

On the other hand I well remember the dentist somewhere in New Cross who smiled at my mother when she pointed out that one of my front teeth was overlapping another and casually commented “that I was a boy so it didn’t matter, but if I had been a girl that would have been different.”

This was another time when according my dentist one patient recalled that her dentist had smoked throughout the consultation and extraction.

All of which is even less surprising when you discover that in the 1930s some in doctor’s waiting rooms there were cigarette machines.*

And before we become over smug there will always been the judgment of future dentists who may well shudder at the idea that once upon a time teeth were drilled and extracted and pain relief administered by a needle.

Picture; Dental Practice on Hyde Road, 1958, F Hotchin, m27263, Moston Lane, 1959, L Kaye, m33570
 & Market Street, City Engineers, 1908,  m78288, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

*Before the NHS BBC documentary 1988