In medieval Europe, barber-surgeons could cut your hair, shave your face, give you some bloodletting, and tend to a broken limb.
They may also remove a tooth with a “pelican” (a rough, beak-shaped stem) or pry it with an iron.tooth wrench”. In the 17th century they could simply knock it down with a steel sword. punch elevator.
It’s a winding and scary path from these early practitioners of dentistry to today’s world of 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and robots that can create dental implants.
Wayne Sampson, dental historian and emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide, says the history of dental work goes back much further than barber-surgeons.
“If you look archaeologically you will find evidence of something dental: the Etruscans used gold wire to hold a tooth, usually an animal tooth, but it could have been human,” he says.
Guardian Australia will meet Sampson at the PR Begg Museum in central Adelaide, where he will be surrounded by examples of tooth molds and braces, and equipment including a foot-operated drill. There are elegantly shaped wires, an ashtray, and a box full of teeth wrapped in various metals.
After discarding its connection with barbers, dentistry remained under medicine in many parts of the world before becoming its own specialty in the early 19th century. But it remained a fairly crude practice for the next 100 years.
Enter Dr. Percy Raymond Begg, better known as Tick Begg, who modernized orthodontic techniques and transformed braces.
“The industry has changed dramatically,” Sampson says. “And I think Dr. Begg fits the tipping point pretty well. Because before him orthodontics was very crude, with limited machinery to try to move the teeth… mainly with levers,” he jokes.
“It was characterized by not particularly well-directed heavy forces, which largely just knocked over the tooth…and Dr. Begg changed all that.”
Begg studied in Melbourne before training with acclaimed American orthodontist Dr Edward Hartley Angle. He treated his first patient in Adelaide in 1926.
“He was not the first orthodontist in Australia… (but he was) one of the first orthodontists trained or recognized in Australia, if not the world,” Sampson says.
The SA History Hub describes that Begg faithfully followed Angle’s methods until 1928, when he “broke with established tradition and became the first orthodontist to extract selected teeth to correct dental crowding.”
Begg’s technique “used new styles of brackets, stainless steel wire, light forces and three well-organized treatment stages” to correct teeth more gently, efficiently and economically.
“What he quickly realized was that Angle was wrong… about not being an extractionist, never removing any permanent teeth,” Sampson says.
“Begg tried practicing non-extraction for a few years and quickly realized it wasn’t working. Then he came up with the revolutionary idea of extracting some teeth to make room.”
He studied overcrowding, wear and tear, and movement. His findings and techniques were collected all over the world.
“Adelaide became the orthodontic center of the world,” Sampson says. “We had people come here from all kinds of places. Big names. As students you think, wow, they visited here. Americans really know where Adelaide is.
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“There aren’t many people in any field, in any walk of life, who can really change the way things were done on a global scale.”
Sampson says the museum is a tribute to Begg. “He deserves the recognition.
“Begg has in some ways influenced modern orthodontics and the patients who receive it at either end of the technology scale. He revolutionized the way everything was done.
“He really was a pioneering orthodontist.”
AI Advances
Now practices are changing faster than Begg ever imagined.
Khaled Ahmed, associate professor of restorative dentistry and general practice at the Royal Melbourne Dental Hospital, says digital dentistry has brought “astonishing” advances.
“We can… quickly get a very accurate scan of the patient’s mouth, digitally design the filling or dental crown they need, and 3D print or mill that custom restoration and fit it through a highly streamlined workflow that can last only one hour. instead of days or weeks,” she says.
Are you missing a tooth and need a dental implant and crown? Soon, a robot will help your dental surgeon place that implant precisely and efficiently.
The first of them, Yomi, has been approved in the United States.
Ahmed says robotics will eventually expand to help with fillings and root canals. “These robots will also be guided by artificial intelligence trained on huge patient data sets,” he says.
AI will be able to generate personalized treatment plans, help dentists detect cavities and gum disease, help patients book appointments, and even give them advice. But there will still be challenges around privacy, affordable access and upskilling, Ahmed says.
A promotional video for Yomi shows a dentist place six implants in 90 seconds. Another shows his robotic arm guiding the surgeon and the drill into the correct position, where Yomi drills to a precise depth.
If this sounds a little less scary than facing a pelican, a toothpick, or a pencil sharpener, rest assured, dentists who use it say patients are “more comfortable and satisfied” and that it can “relieve anxiety.” .
