The history of ... Part 2

Editor's note: Jimmy Earll (not his real name) is a practicing dentist in Northern California and a stand-up comic who performs all over North America. His column, Laughing Gas, appears regularly on the DrBicuspid.com advice and opinion page, Second Opinion.

Here you go ... more history and humor from the pages of Dentistry: An Illustrated History (Malvin E. Ring, D.D.S., Abradale Press).

"The focus of interest in this lively street scene in an imaginary town is a dentist on horseback extracting a tooth. The Dutch genre artist Johannes Lingelbach painted it in 1651. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam." What should we do today? Check out the new Harry Potter movie? Or go to the town square and watch some extractions? You'd think he would have the courtesy of getting off the horse -- but that's actually a good idea if Mr. Brokeback dentist pulled out the wrong tooth.

"The teeth of this Mayan skull of the ninth century A.D. have numerous inlays of jade and turquoise." He must have been the Li'l Wayne or T-Pain of the very happening Mayan hip-hop scene.

"On view in the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, is this replica of Dr. G.V. Black's operating room in Jacksonville, Illinois, about 1885." There goes G.V. again, always buying the latest cool stuff ...

"Shown here in 1900 is the dental clinic at the University of Illinois, Chicago, filled to capacity. The patients closest to the camera have rubber dams over their mouths. These sheets of rubber, the invention of Dr. Sanford C. Barnum, were used to isolate teeth and keep them dry during a dental procedure." Oh, is THAT what a rubber dam is for. (That's me, class clown, far right.)

"The sign over the door of this dental office in rural Georgia during the depths of the Great Depression indicates that dentists were not spared the economic hardships plaguing the country." Will you take two chickens and my daughter for the white filling? No, OK ... how about my wife for the silver filling?

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