The Museum that Is Devoted to Dentistry

Goldie Blumenstyk, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscribers only) (Feb. 4, 2004):

It takes only a few minutes of peering into the felt-lined drawers filled with heavy, iron tooth-extraction keys, examining the collections of pearl- and ebony-handled probes, and staring up at the museum display cases brimming with tiny sets of false teeth before the feeling overwhelms: I should have flossed.

It's a pretty common reaction, says Scott D. Swank, the curator. And hardly unintended. What kind of dentistry museum would this be if it didn't guilt visitors into thinking about their teeth?

But for Dr. Swank, a dentist by training but a historian at heart, it's history, not hygiene, that makes this museum so compelling.

Perhaps best known for its display of a set of dentures worn by George Washington (three are held elsewhere and the founding father was buried with the fifth), the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry houses more than 40,000 other objects in its three-story building here at the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

The collection features not only dental tools, but also dentist-office furniture, dental-oriented art, dentist-themed toys, even dental music (mostly jingles from old toothpaste commercials, including the peppy "Ultra-Brite ... gives your mouth ... [ping] ... sex appeal!").

Dr. Swank sees cultural or social significance in just about every piece.

The giant, wooden "dental parlor" sign in the shape of a tooth? That was advertising inspired by the barber pole. Many of the first dentists were barbers. "They were people who were good with their hands," he says.

That velvet-upholstered dentist's chair? It's impractical, yes, but it's also a reflection of its time. "Victorian society wouldn't let you have anything less frilly," Dr. Swank explains.

And should one not yet have developed a profound respect for the imagination of toothbrush designers through the ages, the collection here will fix that. The museum has dozens of toothbrushes on display and hundreds more in its basement warehouse: early ones with handles made of bone, devices that look like pizza cutters ("You were supposed to roll it across your teeth," Dr. Swank says in his typical deadpan), and models from the 1940s that look like six-shooters. Those were made when B westerns were the rage. "Can you imagine a company coming out with a toothbrush that looks like a pistol now?" he asks.

Through toothbrushes, Dr. Swank notes, "you can learn a lot of cultural history." (The museum has created a traveling exhibit, "Toothbrushes Through Time," which is touring children's museums through 2005.)