0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production

0:04

of I Heart Radio. Hey,

0:11

and welcome to the podcast. I'm joh caught

0:16

and then fun of me

0:19

this. I'm sorry I had something in my mouth. It

0:21

is stuff you should know, and I have no room

0:23

to make fun of you. Friend. I've been on my own dental

0:26

journey for some time now and I'm still

0:28

in the midst of it. What are

0:30

you got going on? All sorts of stuff I

0:33

was not granted with, like great strong,

0:35

um, indestructible, like teeth

0:38

and all that, you know, like the feeling

0:40

I thought like I just hadn't taken

0:43

enough care of him whatever. But now that I actually

0:45

do take really good care of my teeth, I found

0:47

like, no, it's they're just not as great

0:50

as they could be. I think, Yeah, I'm

0:52

I'm fully aware with that emotion, as

0:54

you know. And you know, I don't even know if I said a may

0:56

set on the air, but my front went, I'm gonna have to have

0:58

it redone. Yeah, yeah, when is that

1:00

going to happen? It's sort of I

1:03

mean, right now, he's basically like, it's

1:05

not causing any trouble right now, but

1:08

it's gonna happen at some point, so he almost

1:10

made it sound like, whenever you feel like

1:12

you're up for being toothless again for

1:14

three months, let me know just

1:19

time, just in time for our next live show whenever

1:21

that is. Oh jeez,

1:23

I forgot about that. Um, I don't

1:25

know, we'll see. Yeah, well, it's not like you haven't

1:28

been on stage without a tooth before. You're

1:30

taking them out like that was your stick at

1:32

at the beginning of a number of shows. So don't

1:34

get shy these days, Chuck. No, you gotta you

1:36

gotta work your deficiencies.

1:40

That's true. So

1:42

we're talking about the history of dynastry, which, by

1:44

the way, people listening, I know you know

1:46

this probably, but it wasn't

1:48

until like late in the eighteenth century that that word

1:51

was even used. Really, they didn't even call it dynastry

1:54

until then. They called it fizzle stick. And

1:57

we should thank quite a few people here. I'm

2:00

sure you have some uh websites

2:02

that you looked at, but I went to the British

2:04

Dental Association art

2:07

took dot org History Daily, Uh,

2:09

this great website called all Things Georgian. I

2:11

think it's a blog where you can

2:13

find some cool old pictures of antiquated

2:15

dentistry tools. Uh, and

2:18

then a book by James Wybrandt

2:20

called The Excruciating History of Dentistry

2:23

insert colon sound. Has

2:26

that been happening, by the way, I don't think so. I think

2:28

Jerry thought we were joking about that. Literally,

2:31

I've just been saying that. I'm pretty sure, well

2:33

I haven't picked it up on any of the QA I've

2:35

been doing. I haven't either, So we'll find

2:38

out. I'll pay extra attention UM

2:40

to some tales and oral oddities

2:42

from Babylon two braces.

2:45

Very nice. Yeah, huge,

2:47

huge shout out also to our boy Dave

2:49

Ruse for helping us with this one as well.

2:52

Yeah, this was my idea, and as when

2:55

we instructed Dave, I said, Hey, Dave, how about

2:57

history of dentistry? And it's like, I don't want to

2:59

talk about any thing modern that works.

3:01

I want to talk about all the old stuff, right, and

3:03

all the stuff that they tried along the way that

3:06

people screamed and excruciating pain.

3:08

And actually that's I think that's that's

3:10

good for UM for pointing out, Chuck

3:12

that there are points where

3:14

what stuff we're talking about like might actually make

3:17

you feel faint, like it happened to me. Yeah,

3:19

there's a trigger warning for sure. There was this one

3:21

site called Science Museum

3:24

Group Collection Cumbersome,

3:27

but they have a lot of um dental

3:29

old dental stuff in their collection,

3:32

and they have very high rise pictures

3:34

and a lot of them have descriptions

3:36

of how the thing was used, and like, I

3:39

like, i'd like break out in a little trickle

3:41

sweat along the top of my lip and like

3:43

get a little woozy just reading about this stuff.

3:46

And I'm pretty tough with that kind of thing. I mean,

3:48

I can talk about poop all

3:51

the live long day, but when it comes to

3:53

like pulling teeth out without anesthetics

3:55

and things like that, it's my knees get a

3:57

little wobbly. Yeah. And I don't

3:59

know if you had the same reaction, but looking at these

4:01

ol dental tools, it's

4:03

it's like, well that was clearly

4:06

also this you

4:08

know, like some sort of ironsmithing tool or

4:11

whatever. And they just said, well, hey, I bet

4:13

you if you move that little spont dibbot

4:15

over here, you could also use it to crank

4:17

out a molar. And as we'll see, if

4:20

you wanted a tooth remove for a very long time,

4:23

depending on where you lived, you probably went to

4:25

go see your local smithie. Yeah,

4:27

crazy stuff just settle in everybody. Let's

4:29

start at the very very beginning, because

4:32

for at least seven thousand years

4:35

people have been talking

4:37

and writing about toothaches.

4:40

The Babylonians, I believe, we're among the

4:42

first to ever create an alphabet, to ever write anything

4:44

down. And one of the things they wrote

4:46

about was toothaches

4:49

and the idea of where toothaches came from,

4:52

which are called toothworms chuck, which

4:54

are cute sounding. Actually you know,

4:57

yeah, the toothworm is

4:59

what you I think it is, even though it's not real,

5:01

but little tiny worms that get

5:03

in your mouth, and sometimes

5:06

that they would originate in your mouth like

5:08

spontaneously. Sometimes they got

5:11

into your mouth somehow and worm

5:13

their way literally into your tooth like the

5:15

the non existent core of an apple. And

5:19

uh, this is you know. They said, all right, here's what

5:21

you should do. You should you should uh

5:24

do some sort of ceremony to the gods and

5:26

ask for a little help from the gods. And

5:29

then later on they said, oh, maybe we can

5:31

actually try something. And that early

5:33

something and this is two

5:35

to five zero BC

5:40

years ago for most people would say, Uh,

5:43

they would heat up a piece of um.

5:46

They would heat up bees

5:48

wax filled with hinbane seeds and

5:50

put it in your mouth, and so it basically

5:52

fills your mouth up with the smoke of the hinbane

5:55

seed, which is a nightshade and it can be really dangerous

5:58

if there's a lot of it. But this guy, I just

6:00

showed you where they were at. It seems like all

6:02

the earliest and

6:04

for a long time mitigation efforts were trying

6:07

anything to just numb the pain a little bit for

6:09

a while, because hem pain will do that in small

6:12

doses, I'm sure. And it

6:14

was basically like, let me stop the pain for a little while,

6:16

but the pain would always come back, so eventually

6:18

they had to move to extraction. Yes,

6:21

and that those toothworm The toothworm theory

6:24

of teeth pain had

6:26

some really like um staying effect,

6:29

like it was around in the medieval

6:32

medieval times in Europe. Uh,

6:35

if you actually go to medieval times today

6:37

in your local suburb, you'll hear them talk about toothworms.

6:40

And there was this No,

6:43

I don't think so unless somebody really did their homework.

6:45

But it wouldn't surprise me. No, Um, there

6:48

was a study I ran across that

6:51

talked about and this was a paper from talked

6:54

about a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner

6:56

who cited toothworms as the cause

6:59

of somebody's tooth that they were healing and

7:01

they used that same beeswax, henbane,

7:04

he um like medicine to

7:07

treat it. Here's what I want

7:09

to know. Did they actually

7:11

see any worms ever? Like,

7:14

was this somebody whose mouth was so infected they

7:16

got worms or something? Oh boy, wouldn't

7:18

that be something. I mean, I don't know if

7:20

they were completely invisible. It just seems a little weird.

7:22

Maybe they saw pus and

7:25

and it came out as in kind of a worm

7:27

like form, like is it from the

7:29

gums and somebody thought it was worms or who knows, maybe

7:31

somebody did have worms. It seems weird to just

7:33

be like it's worms without anyone ever

7:36

having seen worms of any kind.

7:39

I told you guys, I didn't

7:41

know that you're talking about mouth bus

7:45

Uh. Let's skip forward to ancient Egypt where

7:48

we have who maybe the first dentist,

7:51

and this is around b C or

7:53

to six zero zero during

7:56

the time of king Is that dozer? That's

7:59

what That's how I'd say j is silent,

8:01

right, uh de hooser a

8:05

dohoeser. Uh.

8:08

There was a scribe called Hessy

8:11

Ree who and they read

8:13

the hieroglyphics on the scribes

8:15

burial chamber that basically said, this

8:18

guy is the best in town dentistry.

8:21

He was the greatest of those who deal with

8:23

teeth, uh, and of the physicians.

8:25

And that was I think one of the first sort

8:27

of mentions of someone you

8:29

know, written down on uh, well not paper,

8:32

but hieroglyphics written down that someone actually

8:34

did this for a living. Yeah. The paper actually

8:36

did come not too much longer after

8:38

that. Um. The Papyrus

8:41

Ebers, which we've talked about many times,

8:43

it's a scroll, and it had

8:45

a lot of stuff medical ailments

8:47

and treatments for those ailments, and

8:50

there were treatments for toothaches

8:52

and um other kinds of like

8:54

oral problems like bleeding gums

8:57

and stuff like that. And of course, because

8:59

what they had a hand at the time where

9:02

like medicinal cures, they prescribed

9:04

all sorts of medicinal cures. And it's like you said,

9:06

there was basically just this aim

9:09

to cure the pain um,

9:12

and they would do all sorts of things like use

9:14

opium, or

9:16

they would use that henbane or other kinds of

9:19

night shade. But then also,

9:21

um, problematically, they would use arsenic,

9:24

which um is it really does

9:27

kill disease tissue, sure, but it

9:29

also can kill you two in some pretty horrific

9:31

ways. Um. What's crazy

9:33

about that is not that the ancient Egyptians

9:36

were using that, you know, like thirty

9:38

years ago, but that

9:41

that was still in use into

9:43

the modern age, Like people were using arsenic for

9:45

a very long time to treat mouth

9:48

stuff. Um. And in fact,

9:50

we've done a lot of weird stuff to our mouth and use

9:52

a lot of things we shouldn't have been using in our mouths

9:54

over the years. I

9:56

was trying to think of a bleeding gums Murphy joke there a minute

9:59

ago. But all you have to do is say his

10:01

name and then I guess, uh

10:04

you you mentioned ancient Chinese medicine or

10:07

a traditional Chinese medicine, and they

10:09

were kind of on board early on. It's

10:12

funny because sometimes people seem to be going

10:14

toward the right thing because

10:16

they were using things like rinses and mouth washes.

10:20

Makes sense they would also use enemas.

10:24

I'm not sure about that. Enemas have been

10:27

listed to cure a whole host of things, but I think

10:29

I don't know about toothaches. It was more for the distraction,

10:31

is my guess, right, than someone punches

10:33

you in the mouth. But

10:36

acupuncture. Of the three acupuncture

10:39

sites for TCM, twenty six

10:41

of them are tied to toothache

10:44

relief. UM. And

10:46

then piling on from

10:48

the different cultures that added

10:50

and contributed to like our general human

10:53

knowledge of how to treat problems

10:55

with the mouth. Um.

10:58

The Hindus from say

11:00

like India and Southeast Asia and South

11:02

Asia. UM. They put

11:04

their stuff down in the Vedas, which were a

11:06

bunch of ancient texts much like the Papyrus

11:08

Ebers, which dealt with things like

11:10

medical conditions, including um,

11:13

how did not just treat tooth problems

11:15

in teeth pain but also

11:18

how to like prevent it. And

11:20

they actually prescribed using like a

11:22

twig with the end with the end fraid

11:24

to um to basically chew

11:27

on and also just kind of brush with it was

11:29

like the first earliest toothbrush.

11:31

And they also had dentrifices, which

11:34

is a type something you would use to

11:36

clean or polish or scrape off

11:38

your teeth. Um

11:41

made of honey oil and herbs,

11:44

which is pretty great. Like that was pretty

11:46

groundbreaking, frankly. Yeah,

11:49

and that's people still use, uh,

11:52

I mean in survival handbooks and stuff.

11:54

They say, if you're you know, lost

11:57

in the woods for for many many days, you're

11:59

gonna want to take care of your teeth. It sounds silly,

12:02

but if you're wandering around

12:04

for three weeks, uh,

12:06

you want to just feel fresh.

12:09

But but the whole twig fraid twig thing is

12:11

what they still people still do that in different

12:13

cultures around the world, chewing on twigs. You can

12:15

even buy some of that stuff still uh

12:19

here in the West, and uh like

12:21

dental twigs to chew on and stuff. Yeah,

12:23

And if you ever have closely watched

12:25

Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth

12:27

Paltrow uses one in that movie that

12:30

she really she does. I

12:32

saw it. I don't know if I closely watched it, though, Well,

12:35

you need to go back and closely watch it. That thing

12:37

is full of so many um

12:39

like, so much imagery, so much illuminatut

12:42

stuff. It's crazy.

12:43

Really, did you

12:45

watch it recently? No? For some

12:47

reason, her chewing on that twig made an enormous

12:50

impression on me because I haven't seen that movie since the

12:52

nineties, but I've never forgotten that,

12:55

And it's not like one of those things where

12:57

you know, like I only think of it when I'm

13:00

confronted with Shakespeare and love, like it

13:03

just pops into my head every once in a while, weirdly,

13:06

so I was primed for this episode,

13:08

Chuck. So when you think when I say the words

13:10

Gwyneth Paltrow, I know you think of two things

13:13

in this order. Her duet

13:15

with Huey Lewis that's third

13:18

cruising? Did

13:20

you just do that to me? Chewing

13:23

on twigs? What's what's the third one? Just goop

13:25

in general? Okay, that's

13:27

probably just goop. Second, so chewing

13:29

on the twig goop. And then yes, that

13:32

duet that I can sometimes push

13:34

out of my head until you bring it up. Um.

13:39

So, now we move on to ancient Rome,

13:41

which is where you

13:43

know, things sort of took a leap forward in a way,

13:46

like a lot of stuff did in ancient Rome,

13:48

not to the kind of modern dental

13:50

work that we're you know, used to today obviously,

13:53

but for the time not too bad, and

13:55

that they did things like crowns,

13:58

they did bridge work, Uh, had dental

14:00

prosthetics made from things

14:02

like ivory or bone, which makes sense.

14:05

Uh, so they kind of advanced things a little

14:07

bit. There was a huge bit, if

14:09

you ask me, yeahs enormous

14:12

leap forward. Yeah, but I mean

14:14

I don't I'm sure they look pretty jankie. You know. Well,

14:18

you could still chew a turkey leg, and by

14:20

god, you'd be grateful you could. Probably

14:22

it didn't matter what you looked like in ancient room.

14:24

Everybody too wasted on wine. Oh I

14:26

missed my time and place, didn't I you really

14:29

did. Uh. There was a position,

14:31

their name all less Cornelius

14:33

Celsus, who filled

14:36

supposedly filled the first cavities, but

14:39

they weren't traditionally like

14:41

we think of cavities. They were from poard lead, and

14:44

they were meant to serve as something to

14:46

grab onto to actually

14:49

pull a tooth. So I guess he would

14:51

do it to like some sort of a post or a stem or

14:53

something. I think he would

14:55

poor. Yeah, it's weird because

14:57

you would have to use molten lead, and you can't just

14:59

go around pouring that on people's teeth and expecting

15:02

their face to not fall off or

15:04

develop a nice post. So

15:07

so yeah, I'm not. I'm not. I get

15:09

the impression that he molded it around whatever

15:11

tooth was left so that he had more

15:14

gripping power on That was

15:16

my take on it. But but it did

15:18

end up becoming like, um,

15:21

I guess at the very least, it's noteworthy

15:24

that he he kind of came

15:26

up with the dental fillings,

15:28

even if that wasn't the point of it. Uh.

15:31

And then before I guess we break, we should mention this one

15:33

more kind of fun fact. An

15:36

ancient room for a for a mouth wash,

15:39

they recommended rinsing the mouth with

15:41

the first yurin of the morning, which

15:45

everyone knows is the densest yellowest

15:47

urine protein rich. So

15:51

we are going to break now because I have that taste

15:54

in my mouth thanks to you, urine. Yeah,

15:57

I'm very very um suggestible.

16:00

Have you ever drank your in? No, No,

16:03

I can say that

16:06

I never have. I

16:08

think most people can say one way or the other. Right,

16:10

Yeah, well, yeah, that's a yes or no question.

16:13

Yeah, yeah, I'm sort of a little

16:15

bit. I haven't either. I was just

16:17

I was just wondering, you never know. Yeah, well, it's

16:19

good that after thirteen years we're still exploring

16:22

one another. All right, well, let's take

16:24

a break and we'll be back right after

16:26

this. So

16:47

Chuck, we're back, and we're into the Middle Ages.

16:49

Now. I don't know if anyone's caught onto this, but we're

16:52

loosely organizing this. Um

16:56

yeah, over the over the years, okay,

16:58

and we've reached the Middle Age Middle Ages of Europe,

17:01

I should say specifically, um

17:03

and after Rome fell

17:07

in so many ways. And of course we've talked about

17:09

it before, but the Middle Ages are often called the Dark

17:11

Ages. You're not even supposed to call them the Middle Ages because

17:13

it makes the stuff that happened during

17:15

this time inconsequential and it's just not the

17:18

case. But it is true that,

17:20

like the practice

17:22

of dentistry really took a nose dive

17:24

during this time. So this is actually a pretty

17:27

good example of how human knowledge

17:30

in um, well, the human

17:32

knowledge of how to do things smartly really

17:34

fell off for a little while had

17:36

to be rediscovered, that's

17:39

right. And it was around this time that physicians

17:42

like they were something special back then. But the physician

17:45

said, I'm not messing around

17:47

with teeth, like the mouth is beneath

17:49

me. Which is funny that that's still sort

17:51

of a thing, right, Yeah, it's true as

17:54

far as like, uh, what movie was that

17:56

the The Hangover when Ed Helms

17:58

was a dentist and none of the doctors like them any respect,

18:01

wasn't it? Um? Wasn't it on

18:03

Seinfeld that George pretended

18:05

to be a dentist for a little while?

18:07

Was it? He pretended to be an architect?

18:10

Right? But there was something about

18:12

a dentist there. It was going to be like a dentist

18:14

at first. Maybe I don't know. Well

18:16

there was the dentist too, which was what's

18:19

his face? Kranston, Tim Whatley,

18:21

Tim Whatley,

18:24

I don't know. It's I don't know. Okay, well

18:26

there's something to pretend to be a dentist. Maybe the

18:29

kid double cross the kid that George

18:31

was sponsoring for the

18:33

the Susan's Foundation was

18:37

said he wanted to be an architect, and then when he takes

18:39

him in there for the scholarship, he changes, he double

18:41

crosses him and says he wants to be a dentist, and

18:44

everybody laughed about how stupid architects

18:46

are, even though Georgia an architect.

18:49

I think we may have hammered it out here

18:51

live on the episode. So

18:54

if physicians did not pull teeth. That

18:57

was left to a couple of other

18:59

people professions. One

19:02

was called a tooth drawer, uh,

19:04

not a tooth drawer. And

19:06

the first reference I found that this was Peter

19:09

of London in thirteen twenty. Okay, you're

19:11

a better researcher than I am.

19:13

That's not true, but it is Chuck,

19:15

at least in this case, it is very true because

19:18

I tried. I looked high and low and did not turn

19:20

that up to find them. Two drawers drawers

19:22

from the Middle Ages. Well,

19:25

I think they started in the thirteen hundreds,

19:27

but I do think you're right in that they had

19:29

their sort of apex probably in like the seventeen

19:32

and eighteen hundreds, because

19:35

and we'll explain what they are. They are exactly

19:37

the character that uh

19:40

what's his face played in Christoph

19:42

Waltz in Django unchained.

19:45

Yes, when he played the dentist, he

19:47

now he would have been he

19:50

was kind of like a tooth drawer. No, he definitely

19:52

was. He was. He was an itinerant dentist

19:54

for sure. Um And yes, he

19:56

he was like a more tooth drawer than what

19:58

you would consider a dentist in today's

20:01

standards. But I also

20:03

have the impression that tooth drawers were

20:05

way more like showman like, um,

20:09

much less scrupulous and and like

20:11

refined, and they were just kind of like well

20:14

like Charlotte Charlottean's and actually the word

20:16

Charlatan is the Italian for

20:18

tooth drawer. Yeah, I thought

20:21

that that's who that character was, though we just didn't

20:23

get to see him practice that

20:25

much. I see, I see, okay, because

20:28

he wasn't doing dentistry in the movie, but he rolled

20:30

through with that you know, big old tooth

20:33

on the spring of his buggy,

20:36

which is pretty fun. But I'm sure at the very least

20:38

Tarantino, you know, sort of based it on this practice,

20:41

which was they would come into town.

20:43

They were sort of part entertainer, part

20:46

um, not even part dentist, because

20:48

what they really were were just people

20:51

with enough uh verve

20:54

to take pliers and yanka

20:57

tooth out of somebody's mouth. Yeah,

20:59

and they on a stage, yes, on a

21:01

stage, and they would be surrounded by a band

21:03

maybe depending on um,

21:06

you know what errow we're talking about, they

21:08

would uh might they might have jugglers

21:11

and acrobats like they basically like

21:14

surrounded themselves with a circus and

21:16

the main attraction, the main event was

21:19

the pulling of teeth, and it would

21:21

just be like one after the other, come on up here.

21:24

And that was a lot of times your only

21:26

option, depending on where you lived,

21:28

was to wait around for the tooth drawer to

21:30

come along and hopefully pull your

21:32

teeth, or again, like we talked about

21:35

before, you might have somebody in

21:37

town who was a blacksmith or

21:39

a goldsmith um who would

21:41

be willing to pull teeth and maybe even made

21:44

like some sort of primitive dental appliances

21:46

to to replace the pulled tooth what with,

21:49

So you would go see him, they pull the tooth and then they

21:51

put like a I don't know, an iron

21:53

tooth in in its place or something like

21:55

that. But that was your options for a very

21:57

long time. Yeah, and I think

21:59

the tooth drawer that you know, the purpose of the

22:01

band was to distract people from

22:04

the pain, the howling pain. So the

22:06

band would they would literally tap on the stage

22:09

louder for the band to play louder when

22:11

it got more intense, and they would,

22:13

you know, they would dope them up with like liquor or

22:15

something, and part of it

22:17

was to like pull teeth but not like, hey, I

22:19

want to pull fifty teeth in this sound to make money. I

22:21

think it was like fifty cents of tooth. It

22:24

was mainly, I think, to sell the

22:26

tonics and the salves and all that snake oil

22:28

stuff that came along with it as well. Yeah that's where

22:30

they get you. That's

22:32

totally where they get you. Still where they get you. Yeah,

22:35

so so okay, So tooth drawers were

22:37

medieval, but that's really

22:39

impressive that they lasted until the

22:41

eighteenth century. They were They

22:43

were around for a really long time. One

22:46

of the problems was that not

22:48

only were they Charlatan's like one of

22:50

their techniques. When they came into

22:52

town, the first person they would call

22:54

on was like a plant who was working with them

22:56

and would come up with like a tooth in their

22:58

mouth already, and the dentists would pretend

23:01

to just painlessly pull it, and they'd spit this tooth

23:03

out and there you go. And then all of a sudden,

23:05

everybody who actually did have tooth paint would

23:07

be willing to come up on stage. They were

23:09

hucksters. There were from what I saw, actual

23:12

like legit ones who cared about people and

23:14

wanted to ease suffering that Christoph

23:16

Waltz is of the tooth drars, but

23:19

there were plenty. For the most part, they

23:21

were generally viewed as carneys,

23:24

like you didn't you didn't you know, you didn't

23:26

like talk openly about how much money you had

23:28

in your wallet around him kind of thing. Right,

23:31

Um, And you know, at the beginning of this section

23:34

we mentioned that there were a couple of types of people would

23:36

do it because physicians wouldn't.

23:39

The tooth roar was one, and then the barber

23:41

surgeon was the other. If

23:44

you've ever seen the great Saturday

23:46

Night Live skit from years ago with Steve Martin as Theodoric

23:48

of York, one of the great

23:50

all time skits, I don't think i've seen that one.

23:53

He was a barber and as you know, of course,

23:55

everything that comes in there, and he's like, you just need a good

23:57

bleeding, Like Bill Murray

23:59

came men with both of his legs broken off and

24:02

just blood everywhere, and he's like, you need a bleeding.

24:04

He's like, I'm already bleeding. Uh.

24:07

It's good stuff. But um. Barbering was

24:10

first introduced in Rome and about two

24:12

nineties six, and they

24:15

think that they got into dentistry some because

24:17

they already had the tools, like sharp

24:19

things basically. Uh. And

24:22

eventually they would split. Barber surgeons would

24:24

split up in seventy. But

24:26

before that they were literally barbers

24:29

and surgeons. They would cut hair and

24:31

stuff and also cut you open

24:33

if they needed to. Yeah. But when

24:35

they split off, it's not like the barber

24:37

surgeons stopped cutting you open.

24:40

They would still do limb amputations.

24:43

They would do bleedings like blood lighting

24:45

with leeches. They would do um, tooth

24:47

pulling, um. And they would also

24:49

shave you and give you a haircut. It

24:51

was like the other stuff that the medical

24:54

surgeons who went to the universities,

24:56

the earlier universities for training, um,

24:59

that's what they kind of kept as their own. They

25:01

became the physicians where the barber surgeons

25:04

were, you know, doing like stuff

25:06

anybody could do, you know, like amputating a limb.

25:10

Right, And the theodoric of York Bit

25:12

is appropriate here because that's

25:15

sort of what you know, the whole blood letting and bleeding

25:17

thing was they were. They would

25:19

bleed people for all kinds of things, including

25:21

tooth pain. Um. They would say,

25:24

you know, I think all the way up until like

25:26

the first half of the eight hundreds.

25:29

If you had a cavity or something, they would

25:31

bleed you first, like first thing. It was

25:33

just a matter of course. Yeah,

25:35

And Dave turned up UM. As late

25:37

as nineteen seventeen, a guy named Charles

25:40

Edmund Kells, who was respected

25:42

for dentistry UM

25:44

wrote a treatise on how to um put

25:47

how to direct leeches to a specific

25:49

spot on the gums, to that

25:51

part of the gums. And I looked into

25:54

my great astonishment, Chuck, we have not

25:56

done an episode on leeches, and by god,

25:58

we are going to do an episode. Really. I

26:01

know. We didn't want to medical leeches,

26:03

right, we did a bizarre medical treatments

26:06

episode and that was in there, and it was in there,

26:08

but I mean it's perfect.

26:10

It's like weird medical stuff animal

26:13

episode. It's got it all. It's

26:17

yeah to the movie leeches. Gotta talk

26:19

about stand by me? Oh yeah, yeah,

26:21

that movie, but also leeches too. Was there

26:23

a movie called Leeches? I'm sure there was. And I

26:25

think I had an exclamation exclamation point.

26:28

Well, I'll tell you what. If there's not that movie, we'll

26:31

do that movie too, Okay, like

26:33

we'll make it ourselves. Yeah, starring

26:35

us, written directed by us. The whole deal. This

26:37

sounds awesome. We could we could

26:39

just go back and use our This Day in History

26:41

series and just dub in new dialogue and

26:44

call it as right. Um.

26:46

So the tools that they would use, this

26:49

is where I went to that Georgian All Things Georgian website.

26:52

There were all kinds of things. It was something called a dental

26:54

pelican. All these were

26:56

sort of versions of forceps. At the end

26:58

of the day. Uh, the pelican

27:01

looks I was sort of like ice tongs,

27:03

like for big blocks of ice. I couldn't make heads

27:06

or tails of how it used. I don't

27:08

know. I mean there's something called a dental key, which

27:11

um could be used

27:13

to either lever out your tooth or just break

27:15

it into pieces. That was the one that made me

27:17

feel first faint. So George

27:19

the Third's operator for the teeth, Thomas

27:22

Bird Moore, uh wrote

27:24

some stuff in his Tristas on

27:26

the disorders and Deformities of the

27:28

teeth and gums in seventeen seventy and

27:31

he talked about this lady that came in that had,

27:33

you know, had a bad tooth that needed to be pulled. One of

27:35

our upper molars and he said

27:37

that after some work, he brought

27:40

away the affected tooth together

27:42

with a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut

27:44

and three neighboring molars. Lord. Yeah,

27:46

so that was I'm glad you said that. I ran

27:49

into that all over the place. One of the problems

27:51

with pre trained

27:54

dentistry, um,

27:56

where there was like actual like science

27:59

based treatments and stuff

28:01

like that when you had your tooth

28:03

pulled, like there was a really good

28:05

chance that a chunk of the

28:07

bone and like your your

28:09

jaw was going to come out along with

28:11

it because they didn't know what they were doing, and

28:14

um, like do you could die from it? Like

28:16

a lot of people actually died from

28:18

an infection that was brought on by

28:20

a badly pulled tooth, a botched tooth

28:23

tooth drawing. Yeah, this is um.

28:25

I mean, it's sad, but it's kind of funny too because it

28:27

was so long ago. But the Bill

28:29

of mortality in London in sixteen, Uh

28:33

what the number five cause of death on the

28:35

bill of mortality? It was just teeth, That's

28:39

all you need to say. That's it. They

28:42

were apparently a hundred and eleven people

28:44

in London died from infections in

28:47

one week, um, brought on

28:49

by botch dental dental pullings.

28:52

Again, we don't mean to be laughing, but uh,

28:54

comedy is tragedy perfect plus time. Right. Yeah,

28:57

I know exactly what you mean. I've got one that's

28:59

coming up that I just can't help. Okay,

29:02

So we finally have reached that eighteenth

29:05

century where that's interestingly,

29:08

that's the heyday of the tooth drawers that

29:10

we described, like where they roll into town

29:13

with like a circus around him and everything. The

29:15

early eighteenth century was when

29:18

they were really doing that up. Um.

29:20

But at the same time, this is also the

29:22

origin of dentistry as we understand

29:25

it today, like modern dentistry. And

29:27

there are two guys that are typically pointed

29:29

to as the um the

29:32

fathers of dentistry. One is a Frenchman

29:34

named Pierre Fauchard, Yeah,

29:38

and the other is that an American named

29:40

green Vardamin Black, which

29:42

is a pretty cool name. G BB.

29:46

Yeah, two colors

29:48

in your name, that is impressive. You

29:50

don't see that very often. Like his name

29:52

is Green Black, Yeah,

29:54

I never thought about that. Well, you just heard

29:56

his name recently. You know what you get when

29:58

you mixed green and black, like

30:01

black I think black, right, Yeah, so

30:03

you could just call him black. So

30:06

Pierre Fourchard he uh.

30:08

He pioneered a lot of things. But one of the funny things

30:10

that you never really think about as far as an advancement

30:13

was literally just putting people in an armchair to

30:15

work on them.

30:18

Apparently before then they would lay people on

30:20

the floor and I guess get on

30:22

their knees. The dentist would

30:24

and put their head between their knees

30:27

and like hold it between their knees

30:29

and thighs to keep it steady because it was

30:31

such an awful thing. Yes, I

30:33

mean that that was dentistry. Yeah, so

30:36

it really was like cutting edge to be like, how

30:38

about you just make yourself comfortable in this chair

30:40

and I'll stand under you instead and me comfortable,

30:42

right. Um. And that wasn't the

30:44

extent of Fouchard's contributions. He was

30:46

the first to to create like evidence

30:49

based treatments. Um,

30:51

he didn't. He just kind of pooh

30:53

pooed the idea of just following

30:55

tradition. He felt tradition was probably

30:57

not so great and he wanted to

30:59

do a apply science and and um ration

31:02

rationalism, I guess to the to the whole pursuit

31:05

of treating people's teeth problems.

31:08

Um. He also got really good

31:10

at um creating um

31:13

like prosthetics like dentures and

31:15

things like that that he would string

31:17

together. Um. He also

31:20

was um known for introducing

31:23

a lot of the dental tools. I don't know if he invented

31:25

all of them, but he he organized and

31:27

categorized him and basically his treatise,

31:30

I think it was a two volume work that spanned

31:32

eight hundred pages, basically

31:34

set down like here's how you be like a

31:36

legitimate dentist, seventeen

31:39

fifties style. And a lot of his

31:41

his observations were so um

31:44

they were just accurate that they still hold hold

31:46

true today. Although I've seen his

31:48

his work as being described as primitive, but

31:51

he was. That's what pioneers do, They

31:54

produced accurate primitive work.

31:57

What about green Black? Was he basically in the

31:59

same out. I didn't see

32:01

a lot about him. I didn't do a lot of research

32:03

on green Black. I just saw that both

32:06

of them tend to be tied

32:08

together as they kind of

32:10

split that um that that

32:12

name is the father. Yeah.

32:14

I saw much more on Fochard. Uh

32:17

should we take a break now, all

32:20

right? We'll take a break and we'll talk about anesthetics

32:24

and toothbrushes, toothpaste, all

32:27

that good stuff right after this. So,

32:49

now, Chuck, we finally reached the point where dentistry

32:52

doesn't have to be the worst thing that ever

32:54

happened to you in your entire life? Then

32:57

why is it the worst thing that happens to me? Be

33:00

as you're failing to imagine how

33:02

bad it could be? All right, I got you.

33:04

Well, like we should thank our lucky stars

33:06

that we were born into an era where there's

33:08

such a thing as an anesthetics. Yeah,

33:11

I mean they did their best back in the day. Like we mentioned

33:13

earlier, they were using plants, they're using night

33:16

shades, they're using opium,

33:18

hashish, uh, kind of whatever

33:20

they could get their hands on to make people feel a

33:22

little better while you're doing this horrific

33:24

stuff party at the dentist's office. That's

33:27

right, Uh, you would use That's still the

33:29

best part of when I get my implants.

33:32

You know that like twelve seconds of bliss

33:34

of what do you get? Do they give you nitrous

33:37

twilight sleep? Okay, wow,

33:39

that's good stuff. Huh And with

33:42

that huh, yeah, you get the I V and

33:44

about eight seconds of you know,

33:47

the best part of your week, and

33:49

then you wake up in your mouth is a little sore,

33:51

like when you're when you're counting backwards.

33:53

You're like, oh man, they know I'm totally wasted.

33:56

I know, and they're making fun of me. Uh

34:00

so sleep Sponges was another thing they used.

34:02

They would soak sponges in

34:05

him luck again, opium, man drake whatever

34:07

they had, and then dry it out in the sun

34:10

and then it was just kind of there at your disposal,

34:12

and when you wanted to use it, you would just activate

34:14

it by dipping it in some water, put under

34:16

their nostrils and there you go,

34:19

goodbye, good night. Um.

34:22

I also didn't know this, and apparently a lot of people

34:24

don't, because I saw it mentioned here there,

34:26

but nobody seemed to have much detail

34:29

about it. But ether Um,

34:31

which I squarely placed in the nineteenth

34:33

century, as far as anti sex go, was

34:35

usually known to humans from

34:38

the twelve hundreds. I didn't

34:40

know that. Yeah, there was an alchemist named Raymond

34:42

Lollis or Raman Lowly. He

34:44

was Spanish, but he was an alchemist, and he somehow

34:47

stumbled onto ether I could not get the

34:49

details, but he saw that, like, oh,

34:51

this is really good at painkilling.

34:53

He called it sweet vitriol. But

34:56

um, apparently it was just lost. The

34:58

knowledge was lost to Stree

35:00

for about five six years,

35:03

which is that's an example of why the Middle Ages

35:05

or that shouldn't be called the Dark Ages or the Middle

35:07

Ages, like that was a discovery.

35:10

It's just that at the time everybody was too stupid

35:12

to spread that information.

35:14

I guess, right. Uh.

35:16

And then finally in the seventeen seventies

35:20

we come upon one of the greatest discoveries,

35:23

nitrous oxide, which is

35:25

so great we did a whole episode on it, so

35:28

we don't really need to go over all of this again.

35:30

But one of the things I don't even

35:32

know if we mentioned back then, because

35:34

I feel like I would have remembered this. But

35:37

one of the young scientists early on who was

35:39

practicing with it, named Humphrey Davy,

35:41

uh, would put it in a sack to huff

35:44

and he called them paradise bags.

35:48

What a great name. I think I remember

35:50

saying that. Well, there were

35:52

you know, the long and short of nitris is it sort

35:55

of came and went over the years with various

35:57

successful demonstrations in front of

36:00

groups of doctors in Dennis, so I'm not

36:02

so successful in front of big groups, and

36:04

so it kind of ebbed and flowed in popularity

36:06

as a result. Yeah, Horace Wells

36:09

um famously botched the demonstration

36:11

that set um nitrous oxide

36:13

back a good twenty years basically,

36:16

but a couple of years after that, one

36:19

of his students, UM

36:21

W. T. G. Morton, said, Hey, everybody,

36:23

you thought nitrous oxide was something,

36:26

check out ether And he introduced

36:28

ether um through

36:31

a demonstration and showed

36:33

how somebody could have a tumor removed without

36:35

even batting an eyelash, and everybody

36:37

was like, Okay, this ether is pretty good.

36:40

So either ether sotoaked rags

36:42

were a UM for a very long time

36:44

and anesthetic used in surgery but also dentistry

36:47

too. And then laughing gas kind

36:49

of UM came back about

36:52

like twenty years after wells is botched

36:54

demonstration. So by the

36:56

late nineteenth century,

36:58

the mid late nineteenth century, UM

37:00

we had two very powerful anesthetics

37:03

that just completely changed the course

37:06

of dentistry and I think allowed

37:08

people to start being like, Okay, I'll

37:11

I'm willing to start like actually

37:13

going to see a dentist now if they've got

37:15

this stuff to offer, right,

37:17

and so they said, you know it would be even better is

37:19

if we gave them cocaine. Uh.

37:22

And there was a dentist, an American

37:25

named William Stewart Halstead, who

37:27

was the first person. I guess you know, they noticed,

37:30

hey, when we're when we're taking this

37:32

stuff and we put it in our mouth, it makes our mouth numb.

37:34

So maybe we can use it for dentistry. Right, and

37:37

so somebody this in the bathroom, that's

37:40

right, and they're like, oh god, this's got such a bore. Uh,

37:43

they injected He was the first one to inject it into

37:46

the patient's gum and jaw for

37:48

pain relief. And so that, you

37:50

know, following that forward, there were a lot of cocaine based

37:53

toothache remedies. Obviously,

37:56

Um, you know, cocaine had the dark side, so

37:59

uh, they placed it with new

38:01

cocaine or no vocane and

38:04

some other you know, non addictive pain

38:06

relievers. But for a while there, cocaine

38:08

was certainly used in dentistry. Yeah. Apparently

38:11

Halsted said that he lost three

38:13

assistance to cocaine addiction.

38:16

And Dave puts like they actually died

38:19

and I was just thinking, like I

38:21

can just imagine Halstead like hearing

38:23

like a thump in the other room and just

38:25

being like another one. Can

38:28

you just imagine like losing three of your assistance

38:31

to overdose deaths from cocaine,

38:33

shooting up cocaine and and like you're just

38:35

trying to do your dentistry practice. And

38:38

then he threw him in his convertible and drove him

38:40

over to Eric Stoltz's house, right,

38:43

and it all worked out. Man.

38:45

We got pop culture flying all over the

38:47

place today too. Uh So,

38:50

now we're at toothbrushes and toothpaste sort

38:52

of a little more in earnest in

38:54

that they you know, we kind of talked about

38:56

the ancient stuff that they would use these tree um

38:59

uh wigs and stuff like that. Gwyneth Paltrow,

39:02

Yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow. Um, they

39:05

they would use cloth. I think the Queen of England

39:07

use cloth and toothpicks until

39:09

the mid nineteenth century. Basically any kind

39:12

of um manufacturing

39:14

process kind of didn't make it affordable to even make

39:16

regular toothbrushes, so it's cloth and sponge

39:19

and rinses and stuff like that. But

39:22

I think they eventually worked out

39:24

the toothbrush and they needed something

39:26

to put on the toothbrush, at which

39:29

point they said, how about just some really

39:32

strong uh scrubbing

39:35

what's the word I'm looking for? Bubbles?

39:37

No, like, what's the power? Like an abrace of

39:39

powder, and they

39:42

use stuff like crushed coral and pumice, but

39:44

that would ruin your teeth after a few

39:46

weeks really quickly, and so

39:48

um toothpaste came along,

39:50

and it's still followed that same pattern

39:54

where apparently the earliest incarnations

39:56

of pepsodent had um

39:59

something that was it was an abrasive that you could

40:01

actually cut glass with. And

40:04

there was another one, another toothpaste

40:06

called tartar Off, that had hydrochloric

40:08

acid in it. Tartar Off

40:10

for sure, I mean it would make your teeth white,

40:12

for sure, but then it would eventually wear them down to

40:14

nubs in like a few months. You know. Yeah,

40:17

I think it took a while to kind of um find

40:20

the right balance between protecting the teeth

40:23

and cleaning the teeth at the same time. Yeah, And

40:25

I mean there's still abrasives in your toothpaste today.

40:27

They've just gotten a lot better at getting it just

40:29

the right amount so that, yeah, it doesn't wear your enamel

40:32

down baking soda and stuff like that, right,

40:34

yeah, And I ran across something and I think

40:36

the A d A website. Um

40:39

that in America,

40:41

toothpaste and brushing your teeth in

40:43

general did not become widespread.

40:46

It wasn't like the norm until after

40:48

World War Two. And it was because American

40:50

g i's returned from Europe saying,

40:52

hey, it's crazy. Everybody

40:55

over in Europe has like actually like nice

40:57

breath and this is how they do it. And

41:00

that's when it really took off from what I and

41:02

yeah, very cool, Yeah it is. It

41:05

is cool in a way, but also like wow

41:07

in another way, like these are my grandparents were

41:09

talking about. Right, Uh,

41:11

the greatest generation, that's right, the

41:14

greatest generation. Uh.

41:16

We can dispel the myth that George

41:18

Washington had wooden teeth. Uh,

41:21

he had terrible teeth and he had a really bad

41:23

time with his teeth. Uh. So

41:25

he did have fake teeth, but they were I

41:27

think the bases were made from ivory and

41:30

tusk and stuff like that, but

41:32

the human the teeth were actually human

41:34

teeth. They were from We

41:36

talked about grave robbing in the live

41:38

episode that we did. They would grave

41:40

rob for teeth. Good teeth. They would people poor

41:43

people that had decent teeth would sell their

41:45

teeth for money. They actually documented that

41:47

he paid his slaves for teeth,

41:49

which, on the one hand, you're like, oh, that's pretty cool he

41:51

actually paid his slaves rather than said, go bring

41:54

me some of my slaves teeth. But

41:56

at the same time, I was reading about it and they

41:58

were like, it doesn't matter really what he paid him,

42:00

unless it was just some eye popping amount. It's

42:03

still like it's an inherently inequitable

42:06

transaction. But um,

42:09

I do feel bad for George Washington in that.

42:12

Um he he apparently

42:15

kind of suffered with his teeth. Like, there's nobody,

42:17

especially in America, whose teeth have

42:19

ever been talked about and written about more than George

42:21

Washington. You

42:23

are a close second, but he's

42:26

definitely the first, first place winner.

42:28

And um he apparently one

42:31

of the reasons why he wore dentures

42:33

and like kind of suffered through this and and

42:35

and insisted on wearing them all the time

42:38

was because his he

42:40

was the face of this new nation. He was the

42:43

first president, right and

42:45

at the time it was it was um

42:48

his vitality, his health, his strength

42:51

was basically the same as the

42:53

nation's health and strength, and

42:56

so for him to show any kind of weakness or

42:58

problem or disease or anything like that

43:00

would make people wonder like, oh, does that also

43:02

mean that this new American experiment

43:05

is also diseased and problem as problems

43:08

And so in a way like he really kind of carried

43:10

this burden for the country,

43:12

for the image of the country. But um,

43:14

yeah, his teeth are he had

43:17

like no teeth by the time he was fifty one. They

43:19

all fell out, and they started falling out when he was in

43:21

his early twenties. I

43:24

was talking to you because I was like, we've seen his teeth,

43:28

and I thought we both actually

43:30

thought that maybe we saw it at the

43:32

the Memorial Masonic Temple

43:35

and in Old Town Alexandria. But

43:37

I don't think they're there. So we think we saw him

43:39

in Mountain Vernon because supposedly that's where

43:41

they are. But both of us remember seeing them at

43:44

that Masonic Temple. I've

43:46

been to Mount Vernon a couple of times. I don't remember seeing

43:48

his teeth, So I wonder if we did see

43:51

his teeth at the Masonic Temple and they moved

43:53

into Mountain Vernon and now I'm looking on the

43:55

internet. It's like, no, they're at Mountain Vernon.

43:57

Silly. Maybe it was a museum of

43:59

sex. They

44:01

had George Washington's chattering teeth. So

44:05

now we move on to X rays, which

44:07

were discovered in by

44:10

German scientists. They started

44:12

using those on the mouth pretty quickly, but

44:15

a thing kind of popped up early on that

44:17

it ended up being bad and that they didn't really

44:20

know how to read X rays that well, at

44:23

least probably everywhere at first, but at least

44:25

around the mouth. And they discovered

44:28

these things a condition when

44:30

they would take the teeth in the jaw X rays

44:33

where they would find pockets of infection under

44:35

the gum line, which

44:37

now we just know are I

44:39

mean, what is that just pockets of infection pus

44:41

mouth pus. Yeah. Um.

44:44

They called them focal infections.

44:46

And the problem is is, I mean,

44:49

it's a good thing that they spotted these, but they

44:51

didn't know what they were, so they linked it to

44:53

other stuff and other organs of the bodies, sometimes

44:56

the brain even, and it become it

44:58

became almost like a new version of blood letting

45:00

in that for a while, if you had

45:03

almost anything going wrong with you, sometimes

45:06

and they showed, uh, these

45:08

these pockets on the X ray. They would just pull your

45:10

teeth like if you had a kidney disorder,

45:12

they would pull your teeth first. Yeah, there

45:14

was a guy who was apparently one

45:16

of the leading proponents and practitioners

45:19

of this focal infection hysteria.

45:21

His name was Henry Cotton. He worked

45:23

at the New Jersey

45:26

State Lunatic Asylum is what they called

45:28

at the time, between nineteen oh seven

45:30

and nineteen thirty and

45:32

he he and his team pulled eleven

45:34

thousand human teeth during

45:36

that time, including his own teeth,

45:39

his wife's teeth, his children's teeth,

45:41

but mostly inmates of this asylum. And

45:44

the idea was that that infection

45:46

had gone to your brain, so you had to pull the teeth out

45:48

around it to treat the infection to cure

45:50

your mental illness. And it just so

45:52

happens, Chuck, that our good friend,

45:54

our dear friend, beloved friend,

45:56

John Hodgman played that man on

45:59

the TV show of the Nick Oh,

46:01

that's true, was that his character? Yeah,

46:04

that guy existed in real life Hodgman's

46:06

character and I read I came across

46:08

a mention of it in Paste magazine

46:11

said that um Hodgman played

46:13

Henry Cotton quote with perfect

46:15

offhand authority. I

46:18

think it's one. But yeah, I didn't

46:20

remember that he was playing Henry Cotton, this

46:22

guy who was just pulling eleven thousand

46:24

teeth from people over twenty three years

46:27

to cure their mental illness, which is nuts,

46:29

but it actually happened. You

46:31

have to text him let him know we were talking

46:34

about his acting career. I will.

46:37

I'm sure he'll hear it when this comes out. He

46:39

listens to every episode. The moment that really

46:41

doesn't, someone will let him know. Uh.

46:44

And then we wind out to kind of a guy who

46:47

um weirdly ended up being

46:50

uh for the wrong reasons, the person who changed

46:52

dentistry for the better, and that

46:54

he was not a good dentist. And

46:56

he was came along at a time

46:58

when the a d A had just formed in

47:01

eighteen fifty nine. They met at Niagara Falls

47:03

formed the a d A in eighteen sixty six.

47:06

They said, you can't use

47:09

you can't be a snake oil salesman anymore. You

47:11

can't have these advertisements and

47:13

personally solicit uh business

47:16

like we gotta we gotta kind of put ourselves up

47:18

there with the doctors guys and

47:21

not do this stuff. And a dude came along that

47:23

defied all that so much so that

47:25

they really started to sort of codify

47:28

and put that stuff in the rear view mirror. Well, they

47:30

were trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves

47:32

from just people who pulled teeth for a living

47:34

but didn't go to dental school.

47:37

And it's hard to do that, um. And

47:39

they a way to do

47:41

that is defined a scapegoat and point out

47:43

how terrible they are, to

47:46

to use them as an example of how

47:48

great you are, right to make yourselves

47:50

look good. And that's what they did with this guy, Edgar

47:52

Randolph Painless Parker, who was

47:55

very much as snake oil salesman, a charlatan.

47:58

He was of the m of the kind

48:00

of dentists that he actually did

48:02

go to dental school. But he he was like,

48:04

I'm losing money to these these tooth pullers,

48:06

these tooth drawers, so I'm gonna start advertising

48:09

again, and I think while I'm at it all, start making

48:11

sneak coil and all that stuff. Um. But

48:13

he was of the school where you would just like

48:15

fill a tooth um

48:18

with a like like amalgam, say

48:20

mercury or something like that. And um,

48:23

you wouldn't get rid of any of the decay, well

48:25

you would, your face would still rot off regardless.

48:28

But yes, your dental visit was painless

48:30

because they didn't they didn't scrape out

48:32

any of the cavity to start. Um,

48:35

that's who they were competing against. So they used

48:37

this guy to basically say all this stuff.

48:39

This guy is doing. This guy right here, that's

48:41

not dentistry. Come over here. What

48:44

we're doing is actual dentistry. It's going

48:46

to help your health. Yeah, and he

48:48

like, like you said, he went to dental

48:50

school. He went to the Philadelphia Dental College,

48:53

but apparently he literally did not pass,

48:55

like he would not have earned a degree had

48:57

he not gone, and begged the dan to

49:01

let him through. And I guess he sounds like sort

49:03

of a squeaky wheel kind and

49:05

I think they just wanted to be rid of him, so they said,

49:07

fine, here's your degree. And so that's

49:09

when he went to Canada and sat in an empty

49:11

office because he couldn't he wasn't

49:13

losing, like patients were coming and leaving, like

49:16

he didn't have any patients to begin with. And

49:19

um, so yeah, he started doing

49:21

the snake whole thing, and he literally went back in time

49:24

to become like a dental drawer

49:27

and had these big sort of

49:29

tooth pulling events and parties with

49:31

the band just like they were in the

49:33

heyday in the early eighteenth century, same

49:36

same exact thing. Unbelievable.

49:38

He also supposedly wore a necklace of three

49:40

hundred and fifty seven extracted teeth

49:43

that he supposedly pulled all in

49:45

one day,

49:48

which is what I made for a good live show. Oh

49:51

well, let's save it. I don't think

49:53

so this is all the makings of a great live show.

49:55

Well, there's a whole thing. I agreed. There's

49:58

a whole thing that we didn't even get to talk

50:00

about called the amalgam Wars, which I think

50:02

we're going to do with short stuff on because it was pretty

50:04

interesting too. All right, Okay,

50:06

I'm up. I'm up for it. So that's

50:09

if for now for the history of

50:11

dentistry. This may be an ongoing thing.

50:13

Who knows? And uh, since I said

50:15

this may be an ongoing thing, who knows? It's

50:18

time of course for listener mail, I'm

50:23

gonna call this I

50:26

missed opportunity for a pavement

50:28

reference. Oh yeah, I saw this one. Did you

50:30

see this? This is from Alan Coleman,

50:33

and this is about the Salem witch Trials. And I can't believe

50:35

I walked right past this because this

50:37

this is one of my favorite Pavement songs. He said, Hey, guys,

50:39

love the podcast. I'm not one of those the chairs

50:42

being able to send into correction, so this isn't one of those.

50:44

I listened to Salem Witchcraft Trials and notice

50:46

an unexpected omission being

50:48

a big pavement in Silver Jeice Fan. For

50:51

the majority of my life, I enjoy hearing your references

50:53

occasionally. So I saw the title and I knew that

50:55

you had mentioned the Pavement song Give It a Day,

50:57

which is about Increase and Cotton Mather. Uh

51:00

good work. Stay alert for those possible Pavement

51:02

references. And I'm gonna read

51:05

the first verse of that song because

51:07

I know this song and it never really occurred to me. That's

51:09

why I didn't get the ref in the episode.

51:12

But it's kind of the most pavement of

51:14

all Pavement songs, Uh.

51:17

Increased mother told her dad. By the

51:19

way he says her dad, I roundly

51:21

disagree with you. Your vocals styles

51:23

too preachy, and the yokels mock your

51:25

teaching, but Cotton he was just

51:27

so oblivious to all their cutting.

51:29

Please. Soon the town folk took to

51:31

it, and every pew they looked to him for guidance,

51:34

just like eyeless lambs awaiting that

51:36

old kebab. Stand the skeptics

51:38

formed the nation's born. They

51:40

want to have it Cotton's dream, but Increase

51:43

had them mounted and they burned on open

51:45

fires. So the words spread, just

51:47

like smallpox in the Sudan, and

51:49

the gentry cried, give it a

51:51

day, Give it a day, Give it a day.

51:55

That sounds pretty pavement. You're You're right,

51:57

it's even when you listen to it, it's like it's

52:00

like Steve Malcomus. It is most

52:02

words, smithy working all those words

52:04

in there album.

52:08

Uh. I think that was from an EP If

52:11

I'm not mistaken, it wasn't on a regular LP.

52:13

I've definitely not heard that one, but thanks

52:15

to Alan Coleman for that. I walked right past that way

52:17

to go to Bob in Nostanovitch. If you're listening there,

52:19

you go, uh, Well, if you want to get

52:21

in touch with this like Alan did, or if you want

52:24

to say hi and you're Bob Nostandovitch Chuck

52:26

always likes hearing from you, Bob, Please

52:28

right in. You

52:30

can get in touch with this via email at

52:32

stuff podcast at iHeart radio

52:35

dot com.

52:38

Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.

52:41

For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

52:43

the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

52:46

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.