11/13/2020
NOT MUCH TODAY, but back in the Middle Ages, the roles of barber, surgeon, and dentist were all rolled into one. Trained physicians were only available to the wealthy, but everyone had access to a barber! Some of the operations these barber-surgeons performed included lancing infections, applying poultices, setting broken bones, and — you guessed it — pulling teeth. 💈
Nobody understood what caused cavities back then, so if someone was unlucky enough to get one and it resulted in a painful toothache, the only option was to head to the barber dentist to have the problem tooth pulled.
As limited as medical and dental knowledge were, a lot of barber-dentists were pretty impressive. One of them, Ambroise Paré, is even considered the father of modern surgery. He made important strides in dentistry in the 1500s, developing a procedure to help an impacted tooth erupt, improving extraction techniques, and even inventing dental implants. One of his satisfied patients was a princess who had lost a front tooth, which he replaced successfully! 👸
We’ve come a long way since Paré and his fellow barber-surgeons. Now we can do so much more to keep teeth healthy that extractions have become a last resort, and there are specialists who focus entirely on treating pediatric patients or straightening crooked teeth or saving infected teeth with root canal therapy, just as a few examples. It’s amazing to look back at how dentistry used to be! 👩⚕️👨⚕️
