Making the American Mouth

by Picard, Alyssa

• ISBN13: 9780813545356
• ISBN10: 0813545358
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-30
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

Summary

Why are Americans so uniquely obsessed with teeth? Perfect white, straight teeth.Making the American Mouth is at once a history of United States dentistry and a study of a billion-dollar industry. Alyssa Picard chronicles the forces that limited AmericansÂ' access to dental care in the early twentieth century and the ways dentists worked to expand that accessÂ--and improve the public image of their profession. Comprehensive in scope, this work describes how dentistsÂ' early public health commitments withered under the strain of fights over fluoride, midcentury social movements for racial and gender equity, and pressure to insure dental costs. It explains how dentists came to promote cosmetic services, and why Americans were so eager to purchase them. As we move into the twentyfirst century, dentistsÂ' success in shaping their industry means that for many, the perfect American smile will remain a distantÂ--though tantalizingÂ--dream.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
American Dental Hygiene: "Small Flags Attached to Toothbrushes May Be Waved"	p. 14
Diet and the Dental Critique of American Life: "We Boast of Our Civilization, But We Starve Our Children"	p. 42
"Like a Sugar-Coated Pill": Defining American Dentistry Abroad	p. 72
"This National Stupidity": American Dental Economics in the 1930s and 1940s	p. 99
Behind the Fluorine Curtain	p. 117
The "Satisfaction of Dentistry" and the End of Public Health	p. 141
The Look of the American Mouth	p. 158
Epilogue	p. 175
Notes	p. 183
Index	p. 217
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