1960s dentistry and Call the Midwife.

Call the Midwife is a popular TV series exploring difficult life, especially for women, in the East End of London in the 1960s. This paper recalls how the TV company enlisted help from the BDA Museum to develop some dental scenarios. Ideas were developed and help was given to write scripts and then during filming.

James Smith Turner (1832-1904) and the British Dental Association.

Together with John Tomes, J. S. Turner was a leading campaigner in the fight to advance dentistry from a trade to a profession. Through the Dental Reform Committee he promoted the establishment of a Dentists Register and then the British Dental Association. As first secretary of the BDA he guided it through its first days. He became president in 1891.

Dental witness seminars: dentistry in the UK since 1948.

Witness seminars attempt to get behind the scenes of advances and developments to find out what really happened at certain times; they are not intended to provide a detailed history of events. This paper presents highlights from the five John McLean Archive witness seminars, providing an instructional collection of memories and insights into the world of dentistry in the UK since the late 1940s. It is concluded that future change will be seen as a welcome constant to be used for the benefit of the profession and the patients and communities it serves.

The Royal Colleges, the LDS and the struggles of the dental profession.

This paper is based on a lecture to the symposium on 'apprenticeship to life long learning: dental education through the centuries', Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow.

The effect of a domiciliary denture service on oral health related quality of life: a randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the effectiveness of a domiciliary denture service on the oral health related quality of life (OHQoL) of older patients requiring complete dentures. DESIGN: Community based single-blind randomised controlled trial. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: 133 edentate adults aged 65 years and over referred to a community dental service for domiciliary care were assigned to study and control groups using block randomisation. Treatment to provide the study group with complete dentures commenced immediately. Treatment for the control group was deferred to the normal waiting list but in the interim participants received three home visits from the dental team. Follow up data were collected three months after dentures had been fitted in the study group. OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence, extent of impacts and total scores using Oral Impacts on Daily Performance (OIDP). RESULTS: The study and control groups (n = 65 and 68 respectively) had similar OHQoL at baseline. Two and five participants were lost to the study and control groups respectively. In ANCOVA and intention to treat analysis, the presence of impact, number of impacts and total scores for OIDP at follow up were predicted by group allocation (b = 0.28, b = 0.30, and b = 0.32 respectively. All p <0.001). In all cases the study group showed significantly improved OHQoL compared to the control group. CONCLUSION: A domiciliary denture service improved oral health related quality of life of housebound edentulous older people.

Science and technology in Turner's Georgian dentist's rooms.

Turner's painting of a dental surgeon's rooms, discussed in the first of these two papers,(1) is a very satisfying work of art, successful in its relaying of a domestic drama, and also fulfilling Payne Knight's commission to produce a work to equal that of the older masters. It cannot, though, be relied upon to show us what a late Georgian dentist's rooms actually looked like. For this we are very fortunate to have Turner's sketchbook, with its preparatory drawings for the painting.

J. M. W. Turner's painting "The unpaid bill, or the dentist reproving his son's prodigality".

In November 2002, the BDA News carried an item, illustrated with a colour reproduction, describing a painting of a Georgian dentist's rooms by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), one of the most respected of English artists, which was shortly to come up for auction at Christies' Rooms in London. This work, first exhibited in 1808, was entitled "The unpaid bill, or the dentist reproving his son's prodigality", and had originally been commissioned by the connoisseur Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824). "The examiner", a contemporary London journal, identifies the 'cradle-piece' for the commission as being a Rembrandt which Payne Knight owned, and the journalist Robert Hunt said that Turner had more than come up to the task of showing that a modern could handle light as well as the old master, 'for a picture of colouring and effect, it is ... inestimable'.

Reliability and validity of two oral health related quality of life measures in Myanmar adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: To assess two Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHQoL) measures and the levels of oral impacts among 14-year-old students in Yangon Division, Myanmar. DESIGN: Cross-sectional validation study. Setting High schools in Yangon Division. PARTICIPANTS: A multi-stage stratified random cluster sample of 543 students. OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence, extent (number of impacts) and total score as recorded using the Oral Impacts on Daily Performance (OIDP) and the short form of the Oral Heath Impact Profile (OHIP-14). Psychometric measures of validity and reliability. RESULTS: 15.8% and 53.0% of participants had an impact using OIDP and OHIP-14 respectively. The extents and total scores were low among those with impacts. Both measures had good reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.72 for OIDP and 0.86 for OHIP-14). The presence of dental caries was associated with summary measures of OHIP-14 but not with OIDP. The most frequent cause of impact was dental caries. CONCLUSIONS: Both OIDP and OHIP-14 had reasonable reliability but OHIP-14 had superior construct validity. OHIP-14 appears to be more useful as an instrument to discriminate between groups with and without impacts in population surveys.

Prevalence of oral mucosal lesions in alcohol misusers in south London.

BACKGROUND: Information on alcohol-associated oral mucosal lesions (OMLs) and conditions is meagre. A prevalence survey among alcohol misusers in south London was therefore undertaken. METHODS: Six hundred and ninety-three subjects (388 alcohol misusers and 305 alcohol + substance abuse) attending several clinical care facilities in south London between 1994 and 1999 were interviewed on their alcohol and drug habits. A comprehensive oral mucosal examination was performed, and soft tissue lesions found were classified by the clinical criteria of Axéll. RESULTS: Mean age of the sample was 40.5 years. The majority was white (92.6%); of the whites, 29.9% were Celts (i.e. Irish, Scots resident in London). Many subjects reported misusing more than one type of beverage. Two hundred and twenty-seven OMLs were found in 195 subjects (28.1%). The highest prevalences were found for frictional keratosis (8.8%), scar tissue of the lips (4.8%) and candidiasis (3.8%). Angular cheilitis was present in 21 subjects (3.0%). The alcohol-related OMLs detected were three white patches compatible with a diagnosis of leukoplakia and one treated oral carcinoma. No erythroplakias were detected. The differences in prevalence of mucosal lesions in the two groups were not significant (chi(2) = 2.18; P = 0.14). The prevalence of tobacco smoking was high in both study groups. OMLs were found with all four types of beverages consumed, and there was little variation by the units per week consumed. Concurrent use of substances and alcohol did not make a significant difference to the prevalence of OML. In the logistic regression analysis, minority ethnic groups (Black or Asian), smokers, those with a body mass index (BMI) under 20 and beer drinkers had an increased risk of an OML in this group of alcohol misusers. CONCLUSIONS: In comparison with previous oral mucosal screening programmes undertaken in several settings in the UK, the present study has yielded a higher prevalence of oral mucosal diseases and conditions in this risk population. There are several ways in which alcohol could contribute to these detected oral lesions, either directly or indirectly.

Ethics and Utopia: public health theory and practice in the sixteenth century. An essay comparing the Henrician Medical Act of 1540 and More's 1530 Ordinances, with Thomas More's novel 'Utopia' of 1516.

This essay places the early modern origins of the ethico-legal structure of medicine, in which eventually by exclusion or inclusion, dental activity shared, in the Humanist environment of the Italian Renaissance as it was imported into England in the first years of the sixteenth century. There were two linked stages to this, the first supported by the genius of Thomas Linacre (1460-1524), and the second by the administrative ability of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). This paper concentrates on the evidence for the intellectual basis of More's medical legislation, and that which was made shortly after his death.