“His instruments of torture, called by courtesy dental tools, were many and varied. He was very skillful in his profession and when he took a job he did it in first-class style. The dental tools are simply copies in miniature of articles used in the Spanish inquisition and on refractory prisoners in the Tower of London. There are monkey wrenches, raspers, files, gouges, cleavers, pickes, squeezers, drills, daggers, little crowbars, punches, chisels, pincers, and long wire feelers with prehensile, palpitating tips, that can reach down through the roots of a throbbing tooth and fish up a yell from your inner consciousness. When a painstaking dentist cannot hurt you with the cold steel, he lights a small alcohol lamp and heats one of his little spades red hot, and hovers over you with an expectant smile. Then he deftly inserts this into your mouth and when you give a yell he says, ‘Does that hurt?’”
from the Chicago Herald
a pelican
In the early fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac invented an instrument that continued to be used into the late eighteenth century. It was called a dental pelican because of its resemblance to the beak of that bird. With it, the operator could apply extreme leverage to loosen the tooth out of the socket.
dental pelican (ca. 1600)
dental pelican (ca. 1600)
dental pelican (ca. 1700)
eighteenth century dental pelican
dental pelican (ca. 1800)
dental pelican (ca. 1860)
This ivory screw type pelican was the finest of its era.
dental forceps (ca. 1600)
These forceps were decorated with a dragon's mouth.
dental forceps (ca. 1600)
dental forceps (ca. 1600)
dental extraction with tooth key in Traité complet d’anatomie de l’homme, 2nd ed. (1866–1871), by J.M. Bourgery
dental tooth keys
(below): eighteenth century door key from which the name of the instrument was derived; (left to right): eighteenth and nineteenth century dental keys of metal, ivory, and ebony
eighteenth century extraction instruments
(top to bottom): goat’s foot elevator, chisel, split-shaft punch elevator by Benjamin Bell
two ivory dental file carriers
ebony dental screw
Once the crown of the tooth was broken off, this instrument was drilled into the tooth for removal.
bow drill (mid nineteenth century)
ivory Archimedes drill, ivory hand drill
cased dental set of ivory and mother-of-pearl (ca. 1860) by John D. Chevalier
A dentist would have been proud to exhibit this large cased set to his patients as a mark of his expertise and success.
daguerreotype of a dentist with his instruments (ca. 1855)
Maw, Son & Thompson roll up dental extraction set
This ninetenth century portable set would have been used by dentists in their travels from town to town.
tongue scrapers
Tongue scraping was routine dental hygiene in the nineteenth century.
(upper): by Prout; (lower): silver and ivory (ca. 1780)
Queen Victoria’s oral hygiene instruments
nineteenth century dental hygiene sets
(left): ivory with multiple blades; (right): cased set with mother-of-pearl toothbrush