Orthodontic braces are a common fixture in today’s society and it is not rare to see classmates, coworkers, or family members with braces on their teeth. Both children and adults are often seen wearing braces and there are a wide variety of colors available to allow individual customization of them. Although braces are an everyday part of our culture, little is known about their development or origin. In ancient Greece both scholars Hippocrates and Aristotle talked about ways to fix dentals problems including the straightening of crooked teeth. There are a few men who history considers the fathers of orthodontics and they developed their ideas in the late 19th century. The first individual is Norman Kingsley who was a writer, artist, and sculptor but was primarily a dentist. In 1880 he wrote “Treatise on Oral Deformities” which was a major influence on dentistry.
Edward Angle, an American dentist from Pennsylvania at the turn of the 20th century is widely considered the creator of modern orthodontics and his system of classifying dental arches is used all over the world. In 1887 he wrote “Treatment of Malocclusion of the Teeth”. This volume was revised and republished several times and is the cornerstone of modern orthodontics. Angle served as a professor at a couple of medical colleges and in 1900 founded The School of Orthodontia in St. Louis, Missouri. 
History of Dentures
Dentures and false teeth are a common part of our world. We have all heard the myths about them such as George Washington having wooden dentures and many of us have relatives with false teeth. The Etruscans of northern Italy produced dentures using human and animal teeth as early as 700 BC. The teeth decayed rapidly but were easy to make and were used often until the middle of the 19th century.
Early European dentures from the 15th century were made of bone or ivory. Often human teeth were used either from recently deceased or poor people who sold their teeth for money. These dentures were not comfortable and were attached to any remaining teeth by threads of silk or metal. Wealthy persons had dentures made of silver, gold, or mother of pearl. Keeping the false teeth in the mouth became difficult as the number of real teeth decreased and those that had full dentures had to remove them to eat.
During the middle ages dentures were not often considered and gaps in the teeth were expected even among the nobles. In fact, Queen Elizabeth I put white cloth in the gaps of her teeth to look better in public. Alexis Duchateau made the first porcelain dentures in about 1770 and the first British patent was issued to Nicholas Dubois De Chemant. His method used springs to fasten the teeth and he began selling his products in 1792 using porcelain mainly supplied by Wedgwood.
Claudius Ash manufactured top quality porcelain dentures and affixed them to 18-carat gold plates in 1820. Plaster was used to make molds of the mouth which made dentures a better fit and the use of Vulcanite (hardened rubber) became common in the 1850s. It was cheap and flexible which made it easy to work with and Ash’s company was a prime manufacturer of dental quality Vulcanized rubber.
The 20th century saw dentures made of acrylics and other plastic materials become much more widely accepted but increased dental care has led to a reduction of full dentures in the past 40 years. The method of manufacturing dentures has improved to the point that they mimic natural teeth with minimal discomfort.
Most of us think of using a tourniquet to stop bleeding in emergency situations. The device is often used in life saving measures but like many medical items it has an interesting history. The development of the tourniquet would not have been possible without the work of English surgeon William Harvey who deciphered the human circulation system in 1628. Jean Louis Petit developed the first tourniquet in 1718 to stop blood flow at surgical sites. His invention used a screw device to apply the pressure and he named it after the French verb tourner which means to turn.
Generally, Joseph Lister is credited as being the first to use a tourniquet apparatus to create bloodless surgeries in 1864. In 1873 a tourniquet was developed by Friedrich von Esmarch that did not use screws to stop the blood flow and was a popular device but was shown later to occasionally cause limb paralysis.
In 1908 August Bier developed a technique that employed two tourniquets to provide regional anesthesia to isolate a limb and then infuse it intravenously. This technique was refined as a single tourniquet application by Hamilton Holmes in 1963. Currently the two tourniquet technique is applied often and is commonly known as the Bier Block or Bier’s method. In the 1980s James McEwen developed a tourniquet controlled by microprocessors which has dramatically increased the safety of tourniquet use. The first patent for an electronically controlled device in the U.S. was issued to McEwen in 1984.
