What was dental care like in your childhood ?

Our dentist was called I. Pullum, honestly! I had a phobia about dentists ever since. The drill was very slow,( manual I think) and he once hit a nerve-I hit the roof! Like other people I had many unnecessary fillings because they were paid for per tooth. I remember having to have two back teeth out when I was only about six and having the horrible gas mask to knock me out. I have a lovely dentist now he is very gentle and doesn't do any unnecessary work. I took my granddaughter for her first check up and she was quite excited. Children today should never grow up being frightened of the dentist as many of our generation were (and still are).

I am 71 and still shake when in the chair. It was only when I came to France, in the late 70s, was I offered an injection before any drilling work commenced. I bit the dentist once when I was young and I miss many a birthday party because I refused to go on the six monthly check up. Every time I am near rubber I think I smell gas.
I have a dental appointment next week and I am not looking forward to it even though I know the dentist will be kind.

As I was reading this thread one of my teeth complete with filling has just dropped out ☹️ Appointment made for Thursday morning and although I like my dentist I’m dreading him telling me there’s nothing he can do as I have receding gums. Like most of you on here childhood memories of my dentist haunt me still. My teeth are full of fillings thanks to him resulting in many dental procedures and expensive trips to the dentist in adulthood.

I truly believe that in the fifties and sixties dentists filled every tooth they could as it must have been financially beneficial to them. I had my teeth straightened with braces at a hospital clinic, and was finally discharged from there aged fifteen, with perfect teeth. I then started to attend a local dentist and within a year or so every double tooth in my head was filled. My parents had good teeth with no fillings, my children don't have any fillings, so how was I in need of so much work - and all my contemporaries too?

I remember the school dentist, gas mask and children in the waiting area with blood all over them. Went to a private dentist, but he just filled every tooth In my head, totally unnecessary. We had a toothbrush but whole family shared the Gibbs tooth paste in a tub. How things have changed thank goodness

I remember when I was about seventeen and the dentist gave me the anaesthetic in my bottom left jaw. I was asked to wait outside. They called me in and discussed if it felt numb yet. All the time, I was thinking: 'This must be a new way of doing things!' He became very interested in my TOP tooth and said: ' Well, Miss xxxx ,shall we get started... I said: 'I am not Miss xxxx, I am sickofweddingcake!'
He had the wrong notes... I had to have another needle and start all over again.

Gwyneth

Terrifying. I can still remember the black mask being pushed over my face for an extraction and the dentist took out the wrong tooth!

The same happened to me! I was only eight and I can recall every excruciating second of the two extractions as I could only have had a very low dose of gas that hadn’t knocked me out completely.

Similar story here. We did have toothpaste, Gibbs Dentifrice in a tin, shared by the whole family, yuk,
We had a school dentist too but were also taken by my mother. At the age of twelve I think, I had to have a whole lot of milk teeth removed as my second teeth were growing over the top. I had terrible crooked teeth for a while but they sorted themselves out. Still got them all, including wisdom teeth but like others they’ve been unnecessarily filled during my childhood and teenage years according to my dentist.

I was young just at the end of the era when people where given the money for a set of false teeth for their 21st birthday. I believe when sugar rationing ended the nation went mad eating the stuff like their life depended on it hence the terrible dental health in the 50s and early 60s. This of course resulted in fillings. I qualified as a dental surgery assistant in mid 60s and Dentists were certainly not paid to drill, fill or extract. In those days we were lucky in that there were little charges if any, for crowns, root fillings, still regarded as complicated work. I worked in NHS hospitals and practices. One surgery I worked in even carried out a couple of implants and I met one patient 22 years later whose implant was still holding strong. Society played a large part in the need for fillings; those in the dental profession nowadays would probably be of the same mind with regard to all the sugary drinks and junk food consumed by young folk today.

To be fair to my mother (and I have always blamed her for allowing that dentist to do this to me and for neglect) she was a country girl from Southern Ireland and if a doctor or dentist said 'do it' she did it I think many of her generation were the same.
I read Keith Richards' autobiography. He had a nice childhood but that he felt he had been experimented on by ex military dentists just after the war.

Dentists are so much more gentle today! Mine is still trying to repair the damage done by all these awful metal fillings from childhood! Course we ate quite a lot of sweeties then too!

My grandmother used to tell me she got all her teeth out and dentures put in for her 21st birthday present in 1907! It was the fashion then!

And my father who was a GP working with a dentist in his surgery once a week, said that giving gas was the most dangerous thing he did as a doctor!

Changed days ?

Like so many others my dentist liked to drill and fill, and I ate a lot of sweets so probably needed most of the fillings. However for some reason it was decided that white fillings did not stay in properly and my bottom front teeth were filled with amalgam which looked worse than the small decayed areas the fillings had replaced. Have crowns now which have been great. Also in the late 60's the same dentist also treated my aunt who in her early 20's had a problem with one of her front teeth (next to the 2 in the middle). It was decided to remove it and she would have a dental plate which was fine but he also persuaded her to have the matching tooth out as well, even though there was nothing wrong with it because it meant the dental plate would fit better. When I told my lovely young dentist this last year she was equally incredulous and horrified.

I still hate going to the dentist

Also l think we can award poor Kate1949 and Viridian the dubious prize for the worst experiences in a very stiff competition.

Has anyone else read Littlejohn's Lost World? The author was born in the fifties and it is a lovely memoir of a childhood, which resonates with many of us born ten years or so either side of him. The chapter on his childhood dental visits are almost identical to the reports here. Apparently it was this chapter that had the most responses from readers.

I remember going to a dentist with my mum, where the machinery was run by huge elastic loops and the sound of the drill was terrifying. I can't remember have teeth filled, maybe it was so traumatic my mind has blocked it.

Childhood experience has made me a nervous patient, but the dentist I have now calms me and I trust him.

My goodness, such dental memories!

We had a family dentist and walked half a mile or so to his surgery where there was an aquarium which I loved but this was just to lull us into a false sense of security!

As a child of the forties, there were no sweets until they came 'off ration' and then I think we went a bit mad and I certainly have a sweet tooth. This, together with the 'drill and fill' culture of dentists in the 1950's led to me needing an extraction. I can still remember the vile rubber mask - such a horrible smell.

During the process, I had a dream, still vivid today many many decades later, of me being in a tunnel with a bright light at the end. The tunnel had bends and curves and I followed round and round towards the bright light.

The next thing I remember is my mother being in the room with me and looking very anxious and I was now on the floor. Apparently I had reacted badly to the gas and become unconscious. I was asthmatic so I am sure that this could not have helped either. I was later told that they thought I had died. The dentist was so apologetic that he drove us home in his car as my father (mother didn't drive) was too far away to come and collect us.

My teeth are, of course, full of fillings and my children cannot understand the culture of that era for as a family we all brushed teeth twice a day but still had a copious amount of fillings.. I ensured that my children's teeth were coated in liquid fluoride (I think that's what it was) and it certainly worked as neither, aged 48 and 44 have any fillings.

My Dentist said she could tell my age from my fillings?
Anyone in their 60's, 70's underwent fillings, no Fluoride in toothpaste.
Like most my teeth are OK just have these wretched filling fixed occasionally.

I never went to the dentist as a child. It was only when I started at a Grammar School that I had twice yearly visits to the school dentists at the nearby health clinic. The whole class were seen at the same time in alphabetical order. With my surname beginning with 'L' I had to sit and wait for my few minutes of agony. There were no cheery posters to brighten up the waiting room just display cases of rotten teeth. I always felt those dentists would have fared better in butchery. I now have full dentures top and bottom and the dentist is a distant memory. Bliss.

Terrifying. I can still remember the black mask being pushed over my face for an extraction and the dentist took out the wrong tooth!

I remember going to the dentist in the 50s and 60s and all my back teeth were filled. There was no control over eating sweets and having sugary drinks! I remember having a sugar sandwich!! Shocking. It was even worse for my parents generation as most had false teeth by the age of 40-both my parents did. Such a big improvement now for children.

I agree with Niochorio that the saddest part of all is that our parents were doing their level best to encourage us to look after our teeth by taking us to the dentist every six months and making sure we brushed them yet their trust was misplaced.
Apparently now, though, believe it or not, British teeth are among the best of the world and better than American teeth.

I remember one day getting gassed for the dentist to pull a tooth. Afterwards my poor dad had me slung over his shoulder as I was completely out of out of it, we didn't have a car, so he carried me the whole way home with the blood running down the back of his shirt. Terrible memories.

I eont ho into the details of the horrendous gas mask. So.ething more positive... when I was about 11/12 they started doing research into fluoride and children in my year were given tubes of fluoride toothpaste. Teeth checked at beginning and end of experiment.

Even in the seventies it was a drill and fill culture, usually without any pain relief whatsoever as it was thought baby teeth did not have nerves (they were wrong) and l am sure dentists were still paid for every tooth treated as so many of my generation (born in the sixties) report the same. I was going to post on this very subject as, looking back, I am sure virtually all the fillings l had as a child were completely unnecessary. I feel very strongly about this. It was not unusual for children to go to the dentist every six months yet "need" two, three or four fillings every time. I think dentists saw a small, slightly suspicious, area or perhaps some erosion (which does not need filling) and they were drilling as large a hole as possible for enormous fillings. These days a "wait and see" approach is used. My own children have always had excellent teeth. My mouth is small and my second teeth came in overcrowded so l had four teeth removed to make room for them and have braces. Also my last two baby teeth were removed when l was fifteen as there were no second teeth there. I think they could have left them. Looking back l think only two of those extractions were necessary. Having said that, the policy was changing by the late seventies/early eighties and a more conservative approach coupled with more universal fluoridation was the order of the day so l do not have too many fillings in my second teeth (l should add l have always looked after my teeth) but I have a porcelain crown on one molar that never formed properly. I have an excellent dentist now.