Dental Opinion, Blacksmiths and Dentistry
Tooth drawers: Before dentistry became a discipline in the latter 19th century, charlatans and mendicants pretended to be able to cure dental problems. These people were often called “tooth drawers” (tooth pullers) as were their smallish pliers made by a blacksmith. In some lore, blacksmiths were said to be “dentists”, but this attribution has more to do with their making “tooth drawers” rather than actually extracting teeth.