Hartley Neita, Contributor

Last week, I referred to the disappearance of general practitioners and their replacement by consultants.

There are also, of course, an increasing number of consultants in the other fields of medicine. For example there are the opticians. They, too, are now working with computers and they are more accurate in gauging the accuracy of the lens they prescribe. And then there are the dentists.

Today, they can do remarkable things with teeth. My first dentist was a Dr. Duhaney. He was, I think, the brother of the politician by the same name. He was also the school dentist and like the school doctor he visited our school twice each term.

We dreaded those visits. There was no electricity at our school and he used what resembled a bicycle wheel which he pedalled to enable a dynamo to generate the electricity to drive his tools. When his feet became tired, the wheel turned slower and the tools hurt our mouths.

The first toothpaste I remember was McLean. Its advertising slogan was 'Did you McLean your teeth today?' It became a household term. Families who could not afford toothbrushes and McLean's, however, used chewstick to clean their teeth.

Chewstick comes from a 'wyss', a climbing vine which grows wild in the hills of Jamaica. Short pieces of this plant are cut. One end is soaked in water to soften it. This end is then chewed to create a slightly bitter foam; the chewed wood becomes a toothbrush and the foam is the toothpaste. A few years ago, toothpaste made from this vine was used to manufacture toothpaste, but it seems to have disappeared from the shop shelves.

Toothbrush classes

Children were encouraged to become modern by a Dr. Dahlia Whitbourne in 1935. She was the senior medical officer of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation and she obtained the permission of the then director of education to introduce "toothbrush classes in elementary schools in the Corporate Area.

Each pupil was provided with a toothbrush which they took to school each day to use in teeth cleaning classes. Basically, they were taught to brush their teeth horizontally 32 times, and the same number of times vertically under the supervision of the teachers "until they were grounded in the principle of caring and preserving their teeth".

Resistance

Years ago, Dr. Percival Broderick, the politician/dentist, told me that when he graduated from Howard University and returned to Jamaica, he was appointed the school dentist in upper Clarendon. On his first day he used his First World training to drill holes in rotting teeth, fill them and brush them bright. He went home proud of his achievement.

The following week he returned to the school to continue his work and was greeted by the children whose teeth he had repaired the previous week. They were accompanied by their parents.

"Doctor," one enraged mother said to him. "Me no know what you put inna me pickney teeth. But me no want it. Me want you dig it out and pull out the teeth dem. You hear?"