Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Dentistry by candlelight

  • Dentistry by candlelight

    Thanks to modern anesthesia a visit to the dentist is now a pretty painless affair. This was not the case until relatively recently, and certainly not so in the seventeenth century, when dental services were often rendered by itinerant barber-surgeons. In the painting by Leiden artist Gerrit Dou, the tooth puller is extracting a tooth…