@ golfdelta21 Early dentistry
Why do you think sitters for early photographic portraits always looked sullen? They could not, even if their lives depended on an open lipped smile, simply to hide hideous dental work.
Besides, I would view modern medicine and dentistry with utmost scepticism if not total disbelief if they had not shored up their often quacky practice with the requisite hygiene (Joseph Lister, 1867); anesthesia (diethyl ether, Crawford W. Long, 1849) and penicillin (Alexander Fleming, 1942).