If Anyone Wondered Why Soviet People Have Bad Teeth

[CopeForLife]

http://kcmeesha.com/2008/02/03/behind-the-iron-curtain-teeth/

Ugly legacy of the Soviet dentistry (or stomatology as it was called there) can still be found in the millions of toothless and disfigured mouths of its victims. A visit to a dentist was one of the scariest and painful events a person had to endure in their life. Kids as well as grown-ups tried their best to avoid these dreadful visits, sometimes tolerating toothache for days and even months at a time. Avoiding the dentist during the school years was hard because annual group dental visits were mandatory. Skipping a visit would get a person suspended from school, which actually happened to yours truly, and the only way to get back to school would be to bring a note from a dentist.

The dentist’s office of my childhood was designed for inflicting not only physical but also mental pain on the patient. Multiple chairs were situated in the same room so everyone could enjoy everyone else’s screams and see their unfortunate neighbors in the different stages of confessing their innermost secrets. The chair did not recline so the patient was almost always sitting straight up while the dentist was operating in front or to the side of the chair. Unlike American setup, all the scary tools of the trade were laid out in front of the patient so he could clearly see the size of the pliers that would shortly end up in his mouth. I don’t recall them ever using x-rays so they operated purely on a hunch. One of the girls from my class had a wrong (healthy) tooth extracted while the unhealthy tooth stayed intact. Things happened.

100% true guys. They forgot to mention that in most of cases you were treated by medical students.

 

[CopeForLife]

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