Ask Your Dentist

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DATE: 1930

LENGTH: 13 min

CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Silent, Black & White

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Unknown

Summary

This circa 1930s silent dental film throws at the viewer a potpourri of instructional techniques and tactics: blackboards, plaster casts and models, x-rays, exhibition displays, a projector projecting film footage, a tour of a laboratory, and more. It seems deliberately haphazard, and hearkens to an era before the conventions of educational film-making have been established. Transferred to NLM from the American Dental Association some 30 years ago, Ask Your Dentist is what’s known as an orphan film, its origins unclear. In a 1935 issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association, it’s advertised as “Excellent for high school and adult groups.”….Read the Essay

Supplementary Materials

Stills from Ask Your Dentist

A boy pauses before a door with a glass window that reads Dr. Early Care. His reflection appears in the glass.

A curious student is greeted by his dentist and a nurse

A dentist puts his hand on a boy’s shoulder.

The dentist shows the boy a film of models of teeth.

In “the visual instruction room,” a boy watches a film-within-a-film with his dentist. On screen are plaster models of teeth.

Cursive writing on blackboard: 'To give form to the face.

A bug in a helmet leads other bug to attack a house.

In the mouth cavern, General Germ commands his troops to go down a trap door into the body.

Cartoon animation shows General Germ at the head of an army germ devils marching through the streets pf the body, invading different parts. A street sign reads: 'To the eyes.'

The germ devils march through the body, invading different parts.

Frame from the film showing the title page of a reference book.

Dental Infection and Systemic Disease by Russell L. Haden, M.A., M.D.

An animated diagram shows the head and upper torso of a bald man with his organs visible and labeled, 'eyes', 'joints', 'heart', 'kidneys'.

Nutritional food (a carrot, turnip, cabbage, and tomato) on top of a tooth.

A frame showing a large model tooth being sawn in half from the top down.

Sawing through a model of a molar to illustrate the concept of the cross-section.

A close up of plaster model of a set of teeth.

A plaster cast of a woman’s head, along with a plaster cast of her teeth, illustrating the under-bite.

Intertitle: —that Dental Care is Health Care

Related Resources from the National Library of Medicine

An oval-framed photograph of a smiling girl appears on the cover page of a dental pamphlet entitled Dentistry and Public Health: The Care of Teeth — Cover-page of *Dentistry and Public Health: The Care of Teeth* by American Dental Association, 1933
*National Library of Medicine #101568515*

A set of diagrams of baby teeth of the lower jaw are linked to a photograph of a boy opening his mouth. — Diagram in *Dentistry and Public Health: The Care of Teeth* by American Dental Association, 1933
*National Library of Medicine #101568515*

A cover-page with the title Visual Education in Dentistry. — Cover-page of *Visual Education in Dentistry*, a catalog of dental wall charts, by Dental Digest Inc., 1938
*National Library of Medicine #100958377*

A dental wall chart titled 'Be not the last to lay the old aside' compares an old and new automobile, and worn and new tires, to old and new dental bridges. — A wall-chart links dentistry to an emblem of modernity: the automobile in *Visual Education in Dentistry*, a catalog of dental wall charts, by Dental Digest Inc., 1938
*National Library of Medicine #100958377*

A dental wall chart, titled 'How irregularities affect the face,' compares a face with a normal bite, over-bite, and under-bite. — Dental wall charts took on the look of advertising and magazine illustration *Visual Education in Dentistry*, a catalog of dental wall charts, by Dental Digest Inc., 1938
*National Library of Medicine #100958377*

A patient struggles while a man pulls his tooth. — Toothpulling, a frequently performed dental procedure, was frequently staged in comedic performance, ca. 1892
*National Library of Medicine #101393641*

View of a dentist, a nurse, and four children, one of whom is sitting in the dental chair in the office. — Modern dentistry, mid-20th century
*National Library of Medicine #101441852*

Ask Your Dentist was listed, along with pamphlets, posters, models, lantern-slide sets, and other films, in the Journal of the American Dental Association 22.2 (1935): p.1978.
National Library of Medicine #101237573