In primitive societies teeth were extracted with a chisel-shaped piece of wood held against the tooth and pounded with a mallet. Early Chinese tooth-pullers used their fingers, strengthening them for the task by spending hours pulling nails out of planks; ancient Greeks used double-lever forceps around 300 B.C. Romans used forceps of various designs, including a thin-root forceps, and pliers to remove small pieces; and Abulcasis (963-1013), an Arab surgeon from Spain, illustrated a number of dental extraction devices in his eleventh-century Treatise on Medicine and Surgery, including elevator chairs, forceps, and lancets for loosening the gum. Johann Schrenk of Germany used and described an instrument called a pelican--a form of forceps--in 1481, and a similar device was illustrated by famed surgeon Guy de Chauliac (c.1300-1370). In fourteenth-century England, barber-surgeons regularly extracted teeth, and their familiar red-and-white barber poles--advertisements they used to indicate they would also...