Instruments and Laboratory Equipment
The items in this exhibit are tools used by dentists in laboratory work or, in the case of the chair, during patient visits. The ladles, spoons, mortars, and pestles reflect the laboratory practice of the past two hundred years, as well as the hands-on quality that has so often accompanied the dentist’s work. Used for making filling materials, these items are a tangible link with the material past of dentistry.
Dentists’ chairs, emblematic of an office visit, are a comparatively modern invention. Prior to the early nineteenth century, tooth-drawers and other practitioners held the patient’s head steady between their knees when performing procedures. The advent of the chair led to greater patient comfort, as well as a more professionalized, clinical interaction between patient and dentist (Bennion, 1986). The chair in this exhibit, with its accompanying stool, depicts the patient/dentist dynamic as it had evolved by the twentieth century.
