Bad teeth during war? No problem! We can fix that…

Upon the outbreak of WWI, many of the men who volunteered for service were rejected on account of having bad teeth. Given that many of them would have been able to pass the grade with some basic dental treatment, the army soon found that they had a great need for a specialised dental unit. As a result, the New Zealand Dental Corps, made up of trained civilian dentists, came into being in late 1915.

Dentists were soon stationed overseas, not only working at the New Zealand camps in Egypt and England, but also operating temporary clinics onboard the troopships (since there was often no time to treat all the men before they headed off). Dentists also moved around the front lines as part of mobile dental units attached to medical field ambulances and operated out of tents and abandoned houses with minimal equipment.

As a result of these demands, dental equipment needed to become portable and easily moved from one temporary location to another as demand required. This pedal powered dental drill is designed to be taken apart and stored in a specially designed suitcase when not in use. Likewise, dental chairs like the one below, (which were also used in school dental clinics around the country for many years) became the standard due to the ease at which they can be folded up for transport and then quickly set up and adjusted to height when they got to their location.