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Carol Parry*

Teeth Lost at Sea and Other Stories

A recent contributor to the Wednesday morning Library Conversations (1) meetings held in the Library of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow was Iain Wallace, Digital Services Development Librarian from Glasgow Caledonian University. lain came to talk about a special audio project called "The Spoken Word." In this project a wide selection of audio files are being made available to students over the web to help them in their studies. Audio files are being gathered together from the BBC, and partner organisations in the U.S.A. in order to provide a wide variety of
material for students.

Details about the project can be found at http://www.spokenword.ac.uk/index.php. Iain's presentation made me wonder about the availability of audio files relating to the history of dentistry on the web. The very first one I came across is from an oral history project called Port Cities in which a former stewardess describes working on the Aquitania taking Polish immigrants over to Canada and her attempt to retrieve a passenger's false teeth in a very bad storm. The audio clip can be accessed at http://www.plimsoll.org/resources/SCCOralHistory/19466.asp

BBC Radio provides an excellent source for audio material on the web. In the Radio 4 programme "Front Row", which was first broadcast in April 2004, Francine Stock interviews Angus Trumble, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art and author of "A Brief History of the Smile" published by Basic Books. The book evolved as a consequence of a lecture given by Trumble to a group of dentists and maxillofacial surgeons at a 1998 conference in Australia. Trumble was asked to discuss the evolving perceptions of artists since the 18th century on what constitutes a beautiful face. He focused his talk on teeth and how, until about 100 years ago, the state of people's teeth had nothing to do with whether or not they were judged to be beautiful. The interview with Trumble can be found at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/frontrow_20040423.shtml
.
The Odontological Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons is explored by Quentin Cooper in the Radio 4 programme "With Reference To" which was first broadcast in 2002. In this programme, the curator Simon Chaplin describes the origins of the museum which came into existence in the 1859 to support the emergent dental srofession. Cooper also meets up with Professor Simon Hillson, an archaeologist from University College, London who explains his work in using the museum's collection of teeth deformed by congenital syphilis in the hope of understanding why there was a virulent epidemic of syphilis across Europe in the 1500s. The programme can be heard by following the following link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/withreferenceto_20020819.shtml

* Carol Parry, BA, DAA, Archivist, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow; e-mail: carol.parry @,rcpsg.ac.uk
Details about Library Conversations at The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow can be found on the College website at http://www.rcpsg.ac.uk/library/events.asp.

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