The noise of dental roulette which still makes some shudder is in fact the noise … of progress! This noise is the sound of the mechanism which allows a small cutter to turn very quickly. In this way, it can shear very hard tooth tissue, such as enamel and dentin.

This is what saves, during a toothache when the nerve is inflammatory because of a large cavity. The strawberry allows you to cross hard tissue until it opens the cavity that contains the nerve. And that’s the only way to relieve pressure and therefore pain, when painkillers and anti-inflammatories can’t help much.

As early as the first century AD, the idea of ​​piercing a tooth to relieve pain had already germinated in the brain of a Greek doctor, a certain Archigene.

The ancestors of the turbine and the milling cutter

Archigène would have used a small trephine to pierce the tooth. Its operation would be close to a cord auger used later, in the 16th century, by surgeons to trephine bones. The principle is simple: after having wrapped the cord around the handle, you had to position the point on the surface to be drilled and unroll the string at once to spin the point like a top and start the tooth. The maneuver had to be repeated several times to pierce the tooth and it took time.

A mechanism improved over the centuries

Fortunately, this mechanism has become more efficient over time. It was not until the 18th century that a dentist, Pierre Fauchard, described in a treatise on dentistry (in 1726) the first instruments which penetrated inside a tooth.

But there has been a step backwards with squarers or punches, which no longer have a rotating mechanism.
It is with the force of the wrist that these squarers turn to pierce the tooth. Beyond the inconvenience of the time it takes to complete such a maneuver, there is also the impossibility of treating certain teeth. The aligned handle and tip of the instrument made it impossible to access the back teeth.

The first ancestor of roulette

At the end of the 18th century, the first ancestor of roulette will appear. A rendering rack invented by a dentist named Jourdan. The squarer is a small point (red arrow) which will be able to turn thanks to a system of wheels (blue arrow) which engage, actuated by a crank. Jourdan explains that the patient does not need to open his mouth too wide to allow the instrument to penetrate.
And thanks to a right angle between the tip and the handle, this system can treat lower, upper and even back teeth.

This system will improve …

It is this system that will gradually improve. It becomes the crank drill holder in the second half of the 19th century: a crank drives a wheel system, which turns a drill positioned at the end. The drill bit is easily removable and replaceable thanks to a small clamping screw.

Thanks to clockwork mechanisms, some models can turn the drill bit for two minutes in a row, when the mechanism is fully wound.

The force of the foot turns these instruments

Gradually, the dentist will replace the use of his hands with that of his feet. It uses a foot-operated pedal lathe to turn the cogs and therefore the cutter. Motive power is obtained by evenly pressing the pedal.

An idea from wool spinning

It was a certain Greenwood at the beginning of the 19th century who thought about it when he saw his mother spinning wool with a pedal spinning wheel. He had the idea of ​​adapting this system to rotate the burs that allow him to work on his dental prostheses. Because originally, the pedal lathe was used on prosthetic workbenches. It was only then that the system was adapted to go in the mouth.

The arrival of electricity did the rest

At the end of the 19th century, the pedal motor could be replaced by an electric motor, which made it possible to increase the rotational speed of the bur without effort for the dentist. It is always by pressing a pedal that the engine starts, which is still the case today.

The first modern installations are appearing in the cabinets. The motor is fixed to the wall and an articulated arm allows easy handling of the turbine.

A noise that becomes almost reassuring …

All these technologies have coexisted. There has not been a linear evolution in the use of instruments.
Some dentists in the mid-20th century still used hand-turning burs. The foot pedal motor, meanwhile, was still used during the Algerian war in trucks fitted out to treat soldiers.

The rotational speed of the cutter was much lower than today. And the slower it turns, the more it vibrates … and the more it hurts. The noise of the cutter, proof of a much higher speed of rotation, is now becoming almost reassuring!

To discover other dental instruments, visit the virtual museum of dental art created in particular by Dr Pierre Baron, dentist and historian.