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People Tried Unworkable Methods to Ward off Illness Outbreaks in History

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2020 33 min

Physician - Goat gland — Brinkley's hospital operating room. Imgur

15. When Yanking Teeth Was a Great Wedding Gift

Visiting the dentist is not exactly an enjoyable experience. However, visiting a dentist today is nothing like the horrors that used to pass for dentistry back in the day. For example, in nineteenth-century England, dental hygiene standards were abysmal, and teeth frequently went bad in early adulthood. So each time a tooth rotted, it entailed a visit to the neighborhood barber/ surgeon, who yanked it out with pliers – without anesthetic.

To spare their kids the misery of having to go through that kind of pain several times in their lifetimes, some parents opted for “full teeth removal” as a present to their offspring when they grew up. “Full teeth removal” meant exactly that: yanking out all the teeth from the mouth, and replacing them with dentures. Full teeth removal was considered such a fine gift, that it was frequently given to brides as a wedding present.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.