As Don Quixote once said to his buddy Sancho Panza, "For I would have you know, Sancho, that a mouth without molars is like a mill without a stone, and a tooth is more precious than a diamond."
It is this spirit that has guided the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry, a Smithsonian Affiliate, located downtown just a few blocks away from Camden Yards. The quixotic goal of the museum: to make oral hygiene fun.
When I first found out that the National Museum of Dentistry was in Baltimore, I was intrigued--a museum celebrating one of the most hated facets of day-to-day life? What's next, the National Museum of Rush Hour Traffic? Yet after reading a little about the museum, I felt compelled to check it out.
As I walked into the museum, I covered my mouth so that noneof the employees could detect that I only brush twice a day. The woman behind the desk greeted me, handing my tickets and telling me that George Washington's ivory dentures, the Mona Lisa of the National Museum of Dentistry, are located on the second floor.
"Thamps," I said through tightly closed lips.
The museum first opened in 1996 on the former site of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery (which has since relocated), as part of the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, thanks to a large donation from Dr. Samuel D. Harris, the pediatric dentist for whom the museum is named.
"Dr. Harris' vision was to create a facility where people of all ages--especially children--could come to have fun and learn about the profession of dentistry, its history and its future," said Kristin Foster, the museum's director of communications.
I excitedly hurried up the stairs to see our first president's fabled false teeth. Contrary to popular belief, George Washington's dentures were not made of wood--that legend exists because the ivory became stained because of all the port wine that Washington drank. The museum actually only has the lower half of the original dentures, as the gold-swaged maxillary (upper) set was stolen while on loan to the Smithsonian Institute in 1981. Obviously, historical dentures are pretty hot on the black market.
If George Washington's dentures are the Mona Lisa of the National Museum of Dentistry, then Queen Elizabeth's gilded dentistry instruments are the Venus De Milo. Part of an exhibit called, "Her Majesty's Crowns," the ornate tools display that, despite being British, the Queen was very fastidious about her oral hygiene. I had to press the "replay" button on my audio tour console to make sure I was hearing right.
The museum also has an original Andy Warhol silkscreen of St. Apollonia of Alexandra, holding forceps with a pulled tooth. The silkscreen features four repeated images of St. Apollonia in different colors, bearing resemblance to his more popular prints of Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. The work is featured at the museum because St. Apollonia, who refused to renounce her Christianity even after having her teeth extracted by Roman persecutors, is the patron saint of dentistry. The exhibit notes that her feast day is celebrated on February 9. I imagine this day is celebrated by not eating or drinking for 30 minutes, after which you get a sticker and a free toothbrush.
Also popular is the Terrific Tooth Tales section, where kids can use a miniature dentist chair and faux x-rays to discover how much fun it is to be a dentist (perhaps they should try simulating the part where they receive their paycheck), as well as Stampasia! a collection of more than 140 dentistry-related postage stamps, donated by Dr. Harold Schacter.
On exhibit until August is "The Future is Now! African Americans in Dentistry," which includes timelines and portraits celebrating the individuals who helped integrate the profession. The museum's collection also includes a set of dentist's tools from 1835, which displays tools called the "chisel" and the "probe," and looks like it was taken out of the torture scene from Braveheart.
At the Tooth Jukebox, visitors can learn about how advertising has affected oral hygiene by viewing vintage commercials featuring celebrities such as Bill Cosby and Farrah Fawcett. At another interactive kiosk, you can view dentistry-related movie clips, such as Charlie Chaplin in Laffing Gas and The Little Rascals in The Awful Tooth. I couldn't help but notice they excluded The Dentist, which features Corbin Bernsen as a deranged dentist who eventually snaps and starts torturing his patients, hence sealing his spot in the Bad Actors Hall of Fame, but I suppose that's why I'm not a museum curator.
The museum also seeks to provide continuing education for professional oral hygienists, offering the Dr. Jack W. Gottschalk Distinguished Lecture. This year the event will be on June 18, and will feature Dr. Robert J. Genco presenting "Periodontal Infections: Role in Systemic Diseases," followed by a wine and cheese reception. Of course, the wine will not be available to anyone under 21, or to George Washington.
So whatever it is you're interested in -- American history, film, pretending to be a dentist -- the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry has it all, nicely wrapped up as a novel way of spending an afternoon in downtown Baltimore.
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