Bill Dalton
Seb Cavallaro played football at Punchard (Class of '49) before facemasks were used. He accumulated three dead teeth and a broken nose. A couple of years later he went to Dr. Norman Stowell, a respected Andover dentist. Stowell sent Cavallaro to Dr. Andrew Farquhar, a root canal specialist in Lawrence. While Cavallaro was in Dr. Farquhar's crowded waiting room, Farquhar came out of his treatment room, walked over to a waiting patient, pulled out a tooth, and threw it in a wastebasket.
This was a doctor who didn't like to keep his patients waiting. You have to respect that.
Corrupt teeth are an age-old problem. According to a 6,000-year-old Sumerian text, "tooth worms" caused cavities. Writings in 400 B.C. explained that loose teeth could be wired together. In the 12th century, papal edicts unintentionally put barbers in the tooth business by prohibiting monks and priests from doing dental work or surgeries. Barbers had often visited monasteries to shave faces and heads and many had assisted and watched medical procedures. They already possessed sharp things, so they smoothly took over the tooth and surgery business. In 1530 a book devoted to dentistry was written for barbers and surgeons. It discussed oral hygiene, tooth drilling, extraction, and the placement of gold fillings. (Drills were rolled between the palms, in case you're wondering.)
As the Middle Ages got old, a group of people with formal training called themselves "dentists" and competed with barbers. In 1630, the first dentist arrived in Plymouth Colony. Barbers slowly lost the tooth business to dentists. By the beginning of the 20th century, barbers-as-dentist had all but disappeared. Around this time, Mark Twain commented, "All dentists talk while they work. They have inherited this from their professional ancestors, the barbers."
Although Andover residents likely had access to dentists early in the town's history, we know for sure there were dentist's offices in town in the mid-19th century. Joan Patrakis wrote an article for the Andover Historical Society newsletter about old newspaper advertisements. She stated, "In 1854, at Doctor Sanborn's Dental Infirmary, (on Morton Street, then called Green Street) a set of teeth could be inserted in a single day with little pain and no ether. In 1863, Dr. Bailey advertised dentures made of vulcanized rubber."
In the 1904 "Townsman Directory of Andover, Mass.," Albert E. Hulme was one of three dentists in town (the other two were Drs. Gilbert and Holt.) By 1935, the "Eagle-Tribune Street Directory" listed six dentists in town. Dr. Hulme was one of them. (The others were Drs. Fleming, Kyle, Maslin, McTernan and Stowers.) Dr. Hulme practiced in Andover for at least 50 years, ending his practice around 1954.
Descriptions given by three of his patients give a glimpse of what dentistry was like in Hulme's time. Pat (Johnson) Giblin says her father, Harold Johnson, was Hulme's patient. Mr. Johnson was born on Harding Street in 1903. When he was a young man a horse kicked him; several teeth were damaged. Dr. Hulme put caps on the teeth, and those caps stayed put for 50 years. Pat lived on Prospect Road as a young child and then moved to 48 High Plain Road, graduating from Punchard in 1956. She also used Hulme as her dentist. Hulme told Giblin that when he started dentistry the anesthetic used for tooth extraction was whiskey. (Cocaine was also used.) She remembers Hulme using a mortar and pestle to mix filling material (amalgams). She says, "He used to let me try to pick up a ball of mercury | 'quicksilver' was a great name for it." Pat notes that children today wouldn't be allowed to touch mercury due to its toxicity. She remembers Hulme hummed while he mixed the filling compound. She says he was a sweet old guy who was still seeing patients when he was 95.
Former patients Tom Garvey and Bart Stefani speak well of Hulme. His home and office were at 93 Main St. Garvey began visiting Dr. Hulme in the late 1930s, and says Hulme's house was beautiful with "white sash curtains in the treatment room." Stefani began visits in the mid-1940s. By then, Dr. Hulme's original treatment room was unused, a well-preserved artifact available for viewing. It probably resides in some dental hall of fame today.
Back then, patients sat more upright than today and dentists stood over them to work. The dentist could raise or lower the patient's chair by using a foot lever. Stefani remembers Dr. Hulme humming Gilbert and Sullivan while the doctor's stomach, only inches from Stefani's ear, rumbled its own light opera.
Garvey remembers that Hulme made a "small ball of silver" with leftover filling material and gave it to him. Many dentists rewarded their young, well-behaved patients. Stefani says he was given a dime at the end of each visit. He'd take it across the street to the A&P; and buy candy (creating a nice little paradox).
When Stefani first played school football, he worried about losing teeth. Dr. Hulme assured Stefani that if a tooth were knocked out, all Stefani had to do was find it, put it in a wet cloth, and quickly bring it to him. Hulme gave examples of Phillips Academy athletes who'd lost teeth with no permanent damage.
Dentists in Hulme's time didn't use suction devices to keep patient's mouths clear of drilling debris. Patients did that work through the old "rinse and spit" method. The dentist might squirt a little water in patients' mouths or ask them to take a sip of water from a cup. Then he'd say "rinse and spit" and they'd do that, spitting blood and tooth parts into a spit sink next to your chair. How many millions of times did we hear "Rinse and spit" or some equivalent? They were good and welcomed words, bringing respite from the drill.
Garvey and Stefani both mention the lack of dentistry frills. Garvey says there was no high-power drill or spray of water back then. Stefani says there was no music or flavored dentifrice, and Hulme cleaned teeth "with unflavored pumice and gums coated with iodine." Hulme carefully warned patients how much pain to expect and, like most dentists of the era, didn't mention Novocaine as a pain-killing option for cavity repair. Novocaine was saved for oral surgery. Pat Giblin says, "This was not painless dentistry."
Most folks who e-mailed me about visiting dentists in Hulme's time used the word "pain" and mentioned that Novocaine wasn't used. When I asked if they had funny dental stories, the typical response was, "There was nothing funny about the dentist!" Nevertheless, almost all expressed a high degree of respect, perhaps even affection, for their former dentists. I feel the same way but wonder if it has something to do with some variation of the Stockholm Syndrome (you know, as a reaction to stress, a hostage becomes attached to his or her captor).
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Bill Dalton is a former town moderator and selectman. He can be reached at Billdalton@andovertownie.com.
