The British Dentist by Rachel Bairsto

Author:Rachel Bairsto
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784420796
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

A vulcanite denture was exposed to high temperatures in a vulcaniser to harden the vulcanite.

When the process was complete the denture was removed, trimmed and polished ready for fitting. Combined with the promise of a pain-free extraction, fitting a set of vulcanite dentures was very cost-effective and also popular as a wedding or eighteenth birthday present!

Another more expensive option, particularly for a partial denture, was a swaged (hammered on to a metal model) gold denture. Gold could be fashioned accurately to fit and it was chemically inert in the mouth. A sheet of gold was laid over a zinc model and a horn mallet was used to hammer the gold. Such a gold denture was finished with porcelain tube teeth introduced by Claudius Ash in the 1840s.

It was the introduction of anaesthetics that was to revolutionise the patient experience. The promise of pain-free treatment became a predominant feature in dentists’ advertisements. In December 1844 American dentist Horace Wells discovered the anaesthetic properties of nitrous oxide. Another American, William T. G. Morton, demonstrated the value of ether in October 1846 and subsequently British dentist James Robinson of London performed the first dental extraction under the influence of ether on 19 December 1846. Chloroform and ether allowed for short operations, making less painful extractions possible. In his book Chloroform and Other Anaesthetics, John Snow commented, ‘The number of teeth extracted at one operation has been 1–19 but … better, as a general rule to make more than one operation when the number of teeth to be drawn exceeds 10…’ Both vapours caused serious side-effects, sometimes death. It soon became clear that neither ether nor chloroform was ideal. Dentists returned to using nitrous oxide which had been discovered much earlier and had gained notoriety at ‘laughing gas parties’. It was not until nitrous oxide was mixed with oxygen that longer operations became possible.

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