WEIRD stuff from the golden era

LizzieMaine said:

While en-masse preventative extraction at 21 was never a popular or common thing in the US, it was considered a fact of life here that most people would lose at least some of their natural teeth by their thirties -- and it was quite rare for someone over fifty to have all, or even most, of their natural teeth: flouridated drinking water didn't become common until the sixties and seventies, which made a major difference in the prevalence of tooth decay.

One doesn't think of dentists as colorful characters, but the Era had E. L. "Painless" Parker, a flamboyant huckster who franchised an entire chain of associated dental clinics using his "painless" method of extractions. "Painless" traveled the country giving lectures on his system, illustrating them with a large pail of extracted teeth:

"Next!"

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LizzieMaine said:

Another thing we did in science class was put little square asbestos-covered mesh pads on a tripod on top of our bunsen burners to hold the beakers.

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