Dentistry in Cedar Vale

Cedar Vale was served by two dentists, Herb and Josh Stone. Josh was Herb’s father and, by the time I was growing up, was partially retired. By that I mean that he was working shorter hours than Herb, who was in the office nearly day and night. The Stone office was a complete dentistry, encompassing the usual drilling, filling, and extractions, but, in addition, the Stones made all their own bridgework and dentures onsite. The two dentists worked alone without support staff. No one met you at the door and no one billed you for the work that was done. I would add that no one ever cleaned the office to my knowledge and dust bunnies grew unimpeded in every corner. The laboratory room where dentures and bridgework were made was in total chaos and just as dirty as the waiting room. The operatory where the dreaded dental chair was installed was little better than the rest of the office. Herb and Josh Stone were old fashioned dentists who worked with their bare hands and in street clothes. They may have washed their hands between patients, but instruments were seldom, if ever sterilized and the same implement would be used on patient after patient.

This might seem to be the absolute epicenter for disease transmission in Cedar Vale, but I never remember any of the Stone’s patients catching any dread disease from being treated there. I have a personal theory about that. I believe that we were all living in a very small, isolated island in the middle of the prairies and we were all sharing our space with an equally small band of microbe strains that coursed through all our systems and against which we all had excellent immune defenses. My guess is that we couldn’t get anything from Herb Stone’s unsterilized instruments that we weren’t getting on the streets of the town every day.

When a patient required the complete extraction of all teeth in preparation for dentures, those operations were performed under a general anesthetic in Hays Hospital. The story that I heard from my mother, who was a telephone operator and knew everything that was going on in town, was that Herb Stone would be met at the door of the hospital and his instruments would be confiscated to be sterilized before going into the surgery. Herb was then required to wear rubber gloves and hospital scrubs for the operation, an inconvenience that he must have hated.

The dentistry practiced in Cedar Vale was very simple. We were encouraged to brush our teeth regularly, but no one had ever heard of tarter removal or regular dental cleaning. You went to the dentist when you thought you needed to, with pain often being the first symptom. Herb and Josh did drill and fill teeth using the mercury amalgam that is still used by traditional dentists. I can remember Herb rolling and shaping the mercury/silver mixture between his fingers before inserting it into the cavity he had just drilled. The amount of mercury poisoning he endured on a daily basis must have been enormous, but he showed no ill effects. When a tooth could not be saved by filling it was usually extracted. The gap might be filled with a bridge or simply left to take care of itself if the patient couldn’t afford that expense. When enough gaps appeared in one’s smile all the teeth were extracted and a full denture was created.

When I was a junior in high school one of my front teeth simply died. I can remember getting it bumped in the middle of a football marching band show and in a few days I had an abscessed tooth. The tooth in question was the upper tooth next to the front teeth, or number 7 for those of you who know the system for numbering teeth. Normally that would have resulted in my having the tooth extracted, but Herb knew that I was first chair trumpet in the band and needed that tooth to be able to play. He consulted with Josh and together they undertook to do a root canal filling, which was not a part of their usual practice. They decided to both work on my tooth and for several weeks I had almost daily appointments with one or another of them. I won’t bore you with the gory details, but in a few weeks the job was complete and that root canal has lasted for the rest of my life. The tooth in question has now been crowned to look like a new perfect tooth, but the root canal that Herb Stone put in well over fifty years ago is still there and never causes me a moment’s trouble. All that in an office that was never cleaned using instruments that were seldom sterilized. It is enough to test one’s faith in the microbe theory of disease transmission.