A Toothache Could Kill You
Premieres Wed 14 Oct · 12:00 ET
A Toothache Could Kill YouJoin the list below and we'll send it the day it's out.
Five hundred years ago, a toothache sent you to the man who cut your hair — and the tooth could kill you. How barber-surgeons, fairground tooth-pullers, a soldier-surgeon who ran out of boiling oil, and one book from 1728 turned tooth-pulling into dentistry. Plus: is the barber pole a lie?
Every Then vs Now episode ends with what a surgeon would do today.
Chapters
- 0:00A toothache could kill you
- 0:28Meet your surgeon: the barber
- 1:36The show: fairground tooth-pullers
- 2:33The real danger
- 3:27The barber who ran out of oil
- 5:08The book that created dentistry
- 6:14Is the barber pole a lie?
- 7:19Quick pause: AxonQuiz
- 7:53Then vs Now
- 8:29Modern extractions
- 9:07Same mouth, same fear
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Sources
Facts were checked against multiple sources. Key references (full list in the pinned comment on YouTube):
- Fourth Lateran Council (1215), canon 18
- The Barbers' Company, history
- Royal College of Surgeons archive
- Colin Jones, Pulling Teeth in Eighteenth-Century Paris (via The Paris Review)
- Britannica, Ambroise Paré
- James Lind Library, Paré
- Fauchard, Le Chirurgien Dentiste (1728)
- W. Andrews, At the Sign of the Barber's Pole (1904)
- StatPearls, Ludwig's angina
Some visuals are illustrations or reconstructions. For education only — not medical or legal advice.