A career to get your teeth into - Betty Hammonds dental nurse

Betty Hammonds was a school dental nurse before high speed drills. In her day the drills treadle machines. They turned as fast as the dental nurses pumped!

This week we find out about a dental nurse's job from days gone by and compare old technology with the new.  

Rewind to 1921

The School Dental Service was set up in 1921. Did the events below really happen in New Zealand around this time? You decide by answering true or false.

1. The first flight between Auckland and Wellington is made.
2. New Zealand's first car assembly plant is built.
3. The Government decides New Zealand should have a navy.
4. There are fewer males than females between the ages of 30 and 34.
5. New Zealand gets a Road Code and all vehicles must have Warrants of Fitness.

Word watch

All the words and phrases below are in this week's story. Choose the best meaning and check your answers when you read the story. 

1. different to the norm (a) not the same as normal or (b) highly unusual
2. selective (a) difficult to get in or (b) fussy about who was chosen
3. home science (a) a university degree for nurses or (b) a university degree specializing in human nutrition and food science
4. the cream of New Zealand girlhood (a) the girls that had reached a very high academic standard or (b) the very best of New Zealand girls
5. incisors (a) a tooth adapted for cutting or gnawing or (b) a tooth that is good for grinding.
6. molars (a) a tooth adapted for cutting or gnawing or (b) a tooth that is good for grinding.
7. a Bunsen burner (a) a special type of candle that burns very hot or (b) a gas burner used in laboratories
8. drummed into her (a) reviewed over and over again until she really knew it or (b) repeated loudly
9. sterile (a) clean  or (b) free from live bacteria or other micro organisms
10. therapists (a)  health care specialists or (b) dental nurses

Toothy facts - fact or fiction?

Are these facts really true? Decide with a classmate.

1. Years ago when people had toothache, they thought they were being attacked by tooth worms. They tried to smoke them out by burning seeds in their mouths.
2. Queen Elizabeth I lived from 1533 until 1603 and she had terrible teeth. She filled the holes with bits of white cloth when she went out.
3. Barbers once pulled people's teeth. They stuck them to barber's poles outside their shops to show that they were good tooth pullers.
4. A zoo keeper in London once made himself a set of false teeth using hippopotamus teeth.
5. False teeth have been made out of elephant bone, ivory, silver, gold, pearl and porcelain. Real teeth have been tried but they could turn brown and smelly.
6. Americans that didn't want to fight in the Civil War knocked their own front teeth out so they couldn't fight. Front teeth were needed to rip the paper caps off the cartridges. Toothless men couldn't use their muskets.
7. False teeth used to be tied down with steel springs but they could spring right out of a person's mouth.
8. Natural bristle brushes were invented by the ancient Chinese using  bristles from the necks of pigs. Cold climate pigs were best. Their bristles stuck straight up.
9. In 1824 a dentist named Colin Gate added soap to toothpaste for the very first time.
10. Most American's didn't brush their teeth until soldiers took the idea home after their World War II travels.

Tooth quiz

In Betty's time only the very best school leavers were chosen to be dental nurses. First they had to pass two exams. Try this simple test to see if you can make it past stage one!

Match the clues to a tooth part and then check out this tooth, to see where everything is.

Tooth parts:
(a) pulp (b) roots (c) enamel (d) dentine (e) bone (f) gum

    Clues:

1. I am the hardest non-living substance in the human body. I cover the crown, the part of the tooth you see, with a protective coating.
2. I am the soft, bone like layer below the enamel with thousands of tiny tubes heading towards the pulp. My tissue carries the pain if there is a hole in the protective layer.
3. I am the soft tissue in the centre of the teeth where blood vessels provide the tooth with food and oxygen. I hold the nerves which make it sensitive to pain.
4. I am the anchors which hold the tooth in place.
5. I hold the gum rigid.
6. The tooth is set in me.

Private Badtooth!

Read the first part of this week's story and find out the aims behind the school dental service. It was a world first!

Now scroll down to the big red false teeth and "A toothy problem" in this story. Find out what the army had to do with this world first.

Women's work?

Betty said that 70 years ago there weren't many careers for women. They could be nurses or teachers and a very few went off to university to learn about home science -food and nutrition.

Women today have just as many career options as men, so why was it different when Betty left school in the 1930s? Six reasons are listed below. 

Which reason do you think most discouraged women from trying something different? Compare and discuss your choice with a classmate.
 

1. Many young women leaving school didn't really want to do anything else, apart from nursing and teaching.
2. School leavers seldom saw women doing anything else so they didn't think about different career choices.
3. Most women married at quite a young age and brought up a family and for this reason many parents didn't encourage their daughters to study for a career.
4. Women were paid a lot less than men for doing the same job so it just wasn't worth it.
5. Schools didn't encourage girls to train for careers that were traditionally carried out by men.
6. Many men didn't want women doing work that they thought was "men's only".

Teaching tooth care

Dental care and healthy living has always been part of the dental nurse's job. This includes using a toothbrush properly.

Toothbrushes have been around much longer than the school dental service. The earliest toothbrushes were little sticks. They were mashed up at one end to increase the cleaning surface. The rulers of ancient Rome even had special slaves to brush their teeth.

Read the tips below for brushing your teeth and then use some of the ideas to make a list of brushing rules for the slaves of Ancient Rome. Write your tips as if you are the Roman Emperor and remember the toothbrushes were little sticks.

Brush your teeth gently using short circular strokes with just enough pressure to feel the bristles against the gums. If you are squashing the bristles, you are brushing too hard.

Replace your toothbrush every two to three months or as soon as the bristles are worn or bent. A worn-out toothbrush does not clean your teeth properly and can hurt your gums.

Make sure you reach every tooth. The toothbrush can only clean one or two teeth at a time, so make sure you move the toothbrush from tooth to tooth.

Brush outer surfaces, then inner surfaces and then biting surfaces.

Don't use toothbrushes with hard bristles because they can damage your gums. Use a toothbrush with soft, rounded bristles.

Tooth training

Betty trained for two years to become a dental nurse. Read "Training at Tinakori Road" and find out what the junior nurses had to do when they began their training. Add speech bubbles or a caption to the cartoon when you have found out.

Old  teeth wanted

Imagine collecting old teeth for the plaster cast moulds. Look here to find out how many teeth the nurses had to collect for a full dummy jaw.

Run the cursor around the teeth on that web page. How many molars? How many premolars, incisors, and canine teeth does the adult mouth have?

Perhaps each of the junior nurses collected teeth from a different part of Wellington. Some would have returned with more molars than canine teeth. Some jars might have been filled with incisors.

Work out a learning activity the dental tutors could have done that would have taught the nurses more about teeth and helped divide up the teeth at the same time. Each nurse needs a full set for her dummy jaw.

Pedal power

Now read "Pedal power," to find out about drilling and filling in Betty's day. Read the part below to find out how it was done in ancient times.

Drills help remove the decayed tissue in the teeth. Little picks and scissors were used before drills were invented and then two-edged cutting instruments that twirled in both directions between the fingers.

A Frenchman, Pierre Fauchard invented an improved drill in 1728. It was powered by catgut twisted around a cylinder. A jeweller's bowstring could also power this drill.

The treadle drill was invented by John Greenwood in 1790 so it had been around for a long time when Betty used one. John adapted his mother's foot treadle spinning wheel to turn the drill. John was George Washington's dentist and George was the President of the United States.

The first motor driven drill appeared in 1864. It was powered by the spring of a clock so it was a bit slow.

Today's drills are turbo powered and can run at 400,000 revolutions per minute. There are lasers to zap away decay with a beam of light and a gel that dissolves decay when dropped on a tooth. There is even an air jet machine that sandblasts decay away with air and powder.

Draw up two columns. Print the title "treadle drills" at the top of one column and the title "high speed drills" on the other. List three advantages, (good points) of each machine. The advantages could be for the patient, the dentist or both.

What's next?

Dental technology seems to be getting better and better. Imagine what could happen if computer chip technology was used for dental care.

Pair up with a classmate and work out a job for a computer chip. A tiny one might be placed in your mouth one day to do a special dental job. What could that job be? Work it out and share your idea with another pair.

No pain fillings

Betty said that children just had to put up with the pain of a cavity being filled. Pain numbing injections were only used for extractions.

In the early 1800s dentists experimented with Nitrous oxide, a laughing gas. People laughed so much they didn't feel their tooth being pulled out - well that was the idea.

These days needles are so fine you can hardly feel them but there is another high tech "no needles" piece of technology that also numbs the pain. It's called Cedeta.

A low frequency electronic signal applied to a nerve ending can block pain but low frequency signals don't pass through the body very easily.

Cedeta produces two slightly different high frequency signals which beam in through contact pads on the back of a patient's hands.

A tiny antenna on the patient's gum draws the signals to the sore tooth. The two high frequency signals mix and cancel each other out. They leave a low frequency signal to deaden the pain.

Patients can even control the frequencies themselves to get the level of pain treatment just right. After treatment any numbness and soreness just disappears.

Design a display advertisement for the old or the new pain treatment technology. Display ads are used in magazines and newspapers. They have a headline and picture to catch the eye and they talk about the benefits- all the good reasons for using the product. They also say where you can get the product.

The dangers of mercury

Dentists have used mercury in fillings since the 1800s. Mercury helps bind other metals together so the filling for a cavity becomes a mercury- metal mix.

These days we know that mercury can be a health risk. Inhaling the vapors is dangerous and you should never get mercury on your skin.

Re-read the part where Betty talks about mercury in the dental clinic. In those days dental nurses hadn't been told just how dangerous mercury could be. What rules should the Dental Department have had in place? Discuss and decide with a classmate.

Into the back blocks

Finish the story now and find out how Betty managed to meet and treat kids who went to small rural schools.

Make up a business card for Dental Nurse Garcia. In the middle put her name and occupation. In the top left hand corner put the dates she worked as a dental nurse. In the top right hand corner print a dental success she had in her lifetime. In the bottom left hand corner print a difficulty she would have had to overcome. In the bottom right hand corner print three words that describe Betty's life as a dental nurse.

Fast forward to 2005

A visit to the dental therapist now isn't quite the same as it once was. Read, "A visit to the murder house," to see what one patient thought.

So what's it like now? Read this short story and spot the differences. Find out these things:
 

1. Do most schools still have dental clinics?
2. Are kid's baby teeth getting better or worse?
3. Are anaesthetics used today?
4. Are children in class still just told to go to the clinic?

Are you interested in dental therapy?
There could be a shortage of dental therapists soon. Look here to see what the job is like. Keep clicking on the next page. All sorts of interesting information can be found.

Answers

Rewind

1. True. George Bolt flew a Supermarine flying boat and he stopped at Kawhia and Wanganui on the way.
2. True. It was built in Wellington by the Colonial Motor Company.
3. True
4. True. This is because of World War 1.
5. False. This didn't happen until 1937.

Word watch
1a, 2b, 3b, 4b, 5a, 6b, 7b, 8a, 9b, 10a

Toothless facts

They are all true except for numbers 4 and 9 and these two are nearly true. Hippopotamus bone was once used to make false teeth but the zoo keeper is pure fiction. Soap was added to toothpaste for the first time in 1824 but a man called Peabody did this. Colin Gate didn't have anything to do with it. He's a fictional character.

Tooth quiz

a3, b4, c1, d2, e5, f6