Dentist - School - I love to hear you scream 1904 Tissue Paper

Colorized photo from 1904 Original title: Dental hall, University of Pennsylvania Photographer: Detroit publishing Location: 3300 Smith Walk, Philadelphia, PA This is the Dental hall in the University of Pennsylvania in 1904, the building itself was built in 1895. Here young dentists learned how to drill teeth with a foot powered drill. They learned how to understand people with a lot of stuff in their mouth. But mostly they learned how to tolerate screaming. The hall was tall and long, and with that vaulted ceiling, I would imagine the entire campus could hear the chorus of sound that would echo from that room. Once one person starts the rest will continue, each one trying to outdo the other. Hoping that if they scream loud enough they will pass out and wake up fixed. As you can see, the windows don't seem to open from the bottom, only the top, this is to prevent people from escaping out of them. Also something noteworthy are the lack of proper illumination. Despite having a thousand small lights on the ceiling, dentists in those days had to work with sunlight. Should there be a passing cloud, your mouth goes dark. I suppose there would be a nurse with a lantern of some kind. But it must have been tough. In those days all dental offices had to have a large window facing the sun or they wouldn't be able to do anything. There was also no chair side x-ray units, the xray didn't come out till 1896, and it was a long drawn procedure, I believe it was described as several minutes long and the pain was insane. And of course everyone was irradiated in the room when it happened. I don't see where they do it here, unless they do it in those rooms in the back. So if they didn't use x-ray, I guess they just poked each spot until they screamed. That's just a guess, I assume they had a more medical sounding word when they screamed.