Sunday 15 October 2023

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

8 comments:

  1. 70 and feel sick And petrified every time I visit the dentist and I know it stems from my experience of the school dentist all those years back the big rubber mask the smell of gas the drilling for fillings no pain relief once had a tooth extracted on gas nothing it was absessed I can remember the pain now childbirth was a vacation Chris white chester

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    1. Our school dentist back in the 60s gave his drill a name - Whistling Willie!
      It didn't help!

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  2. One for you to look into Andrew, a dentist on York Road in Chorlton, name of Frankenstein !!!!

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    1. I remember he was there in the 1970s, by all accounts a good dentist though I never went to him.

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  4. I remember it well! Tgat rubber mask to a small child was horrific and that needle. You could hear the drill being used whilst sat in the waiting room!! Co-op dentist. Bolton. 😱🥺

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  5. Blighted blighter22 November 2021 at 15:34

    My dentist, Mr Maynard, took out a healthy incisor when I was 8 (1956) telling my mother all my teeth would miraculously come straight. They never did and I was left with an ever widening gap for the rest of my life.

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  6. I wore a thin wire brace after two extractions. Everything was fine for about five years until the cracks started to show... it's been downhill ever since. Some dentists filled everything in sight because that was how they made their money

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