Who could be so Cruel?

     I had a fake argument with a loved one today.  The question on our minds was this........who would be cruel enough to invent dentistry?  I stated it must be the Nazi's during world war II,  as some form of torture.  They stated that it must have been the french cause look at Frances past history.  You know me, once a question is presented I am forced to find an answer and had to do a bit of research on the subject.  So.....who was cruel enough to invent dentistry??????

A HISTORY OF MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

Germany : Though research on this subject will lead you to a dozens of horrible stories. During WWII Medical experimentation was common practice, mainly on prisoners. Because most medical experiments resulted in death, dismemberment or permanent disability it is considered a prime example of medical torture, not to mention permission was never given by the patient. (look up doctors such as Eduard wirths, who exposed prisons to hazardous material in order to gain more education on military warfare or Carl Vaernet who experimented on homosexual prisoners in the hopes of "curing" homosexuality, Joseph Mengele who experimented on twin children)

After the war these doctors were tried in what would become known as The Doctors Trial (imaginative)and the populations revulsion at what took place lead to the development of Neremberg Code of medical ethics.

As awful as these experiments were Dentistry was around long before WWII and the Natzi's are not to blame

France: 1859 syphilis experiments in which they injected unknowing people with the disease in the hopes of studying it. In a concentration camp in France they took prisoners who survived the gas chamber in order to study the wounds left on them from the new gas being used.  According to the Doctor Trials these prisoners were German criminals who were sent to the concentration camp after being convicted of a crime. Experiments in sterilization.

United States : I know I know I can already see the eye rolls, don't worry i'm not picking on anyone, just talking about history, i'll talk about experiments from other countries too just keep reading........

The Monster Study, 1939, Professor Wendall Johnson and Mary Tudor,an undergrad student at University of Iowa.  They decide to study 22 orphan children.  They took half of them and gave them positive speech therapy and negative speech therapy to the other half, belittling this half for every speech imperfection and telling them they were stutters.  The result?  Most of the children in the second group suffered long term physiological effects and actually became stutters which stayed with them for their life.

Project Multra - CIA conducting research on mind control and giving out LSD to employees,mentally ill patients, and random citizens just to name a few! Took place in the 60's and was given without consent or knowledge that LSD and other drugs were being given.

Ok yup......these are pretty bad.....but not bad enough for dentistry

Canada:  Even got to put my home country in there, and this subject is a little close to my heart since my grandfather suffered greatly because of this testing.
With the permission of the Canadian government the US military tested Agent Orange in the forest near Georgetown, New Brunswick. Military personal on the base at that time were told there would be no harmful effects.  Long term effects included cancer, nerve, digestive,skin and respiratory disorders, miscarriages, still births.  Sorry that's all I'm talking about that.  Despicable! but still not even close to a dentist.

Africa - Army forced Homosexual soldiers to under go sex change operations in the 1970's and 1980's as well as chemical castration,  electrical shock and numerous other medical experiments.  No exact number is known but an African medical surgeon estimated that over 900 sexual reassignment operations were forced between 1971 and 1989 at military hospitals as a secret operation to "force out homosexuality" from the military

Ready for the shocker...................

Dr Levin who ran this study is now clinical Professor in the department of psychiatry at the university of Calgary's Medical School, and runs a private practice in Alberta!

Horrid Africa and Canada, but dentists you are not!

Soviets:  The chamber.  A poison research facility of secret police agencies.  They tested a number of poisons on prisoners, with their goal being to find an orderless, tasteless, poison that would not be detected post mortem. 

scary.....cruel for certain and twisted as hell....but not as evil as dentistry

Japan: 1937-1945 (really people what is it about this time in history that inspired so much cruelty?)

Unit 731 was a biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Second Sino-Japanese war and WWII, and holds the title of being responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personal.

Crimes included..and these make me too sickened to go into detail so look it up yourself...vivisection , including woman who were impregnated by the doctors themselves (give you a hint vivi means "alive" in Latin and sectio means "cutting"......yup just threw up in my mouth a little).Amputations that were resewn to other parts of the body.  Living test subjects for grenades and flame throwers, Prisoners were injected with diseases to watch the effect over time, female and male prisoners where infected with STDS purposely through rape and left untreated to see the effect.

ok so this one takes the cake and I am pretty certain I would bet the bank that the Japanese were cruel enough to invent dentistry......but I would be guessing wrong

AND THE ANSWER IS.............

No one really knows.  There has been evidence of "dentistry" dating as far back as 7000 BC, and that dental surgery was the first specialization from  medicine. (gotta admit that's kind of cool). They even speak of bow drills back then, and the earliest dental filling was beeswax!  Some of the earliest documentation dates back to Slovania but there is also Sumerian text that speaks of a tooth worm causing decay of the teeth.
 Now please note this everyone that is afraid of the dentist as I am or just plain doesn't like them....18th century writing, The Code of Hammurabi.  referenced tooth extraction as a form of punishment...told you they were evil.
    Ancient Egyptians and greko-Roman remains even show evidence of dental work! Aristotle even wrote about dentistry and the decay of teeth, gum disease, and extracting teeth with forceps.  Over all extraction of teeth was used to treat many ailments through out history, the ancient Egyptians even had a god called Hesi-Ra, The Dentist. So.......as awful as the sound of the drill is, the pounding that comes afterwards as your teeth throb, and those God awful little knife they use to "clean" your teeth, it seems the dentist isn't as awful as I thought!  Trust me when I tell you for me, that's saying something.

The stuff of horror movies if you ask me!