A visit to the dentist could be painful yet Germany's Dental Museum offers enjoyable moments amid thousands of teeth.
Instead of trying to be another lesson in oral hygiene, this museum tells the story of how we humans have struggled to understand our teeth over the past few millennia.
A wide variety of toothpicks, prostheses, ivory carvings, and other bizarre tooth-related exhibits – some of which are 2,500 years old – can now be viewed by visitors for a short time in the museum, located near the city of Leipzig.
"They won't be seen on this scale again so soon," said museum director Andreas Haesler, ahead of the opening of a special exhibition on May 3.
The museum's permanent exhibition displays numerous collector's items from hundreds of years of dentistry. "But that is only about 1% of our actual contents," Haesler said.
Both the museum and its hometown of Colditz, in the depths of former communist East Germany, are relatively unknown, even in Germany.
The goal of the new exhibition is, firstly, to help the museum gain a name for itself. Curators are also looking to find a new home, potentially beyond the eastern German state of Saxony.
"With our globally unique collection, we simply don't feel wanted in Saxony. The special exhibition should show what a tremendous treasure we have here," said Haesler.
Haesler compares the scope of the pieces he has collected over decades to that of the artworks in France's sprawling Louvre.
"In our museum, you can find examples of everything that is famous and significant in dentistry." And yet the museum itself is currently getting "almost zero" support.
Among the most curious exhibits is a relic said to be the tooth of the patron saint of dentistry, Apollonia, a martyr believed to have had all her teeth pulled out or shattered, and who is often depicted with orthodontic pliers.
Attempts to explain the cause of dental problems can be seen in a French ivory carving from around 1760 called "The Tooth of Hell," depicting toothache in the form of hellfire and a tooth devil in two halves of a large molar.
Labeled skulls, jawbones, and teeth for educational purposes are on display. Visitors can see dentures that are several hundred years old and pillboxes containing medicine believed to dull toothaches before awareness of oral hygiene.
In order to make the collection known and usable internationally, the exhibits are set to be digitized. "We will also start with that in May," says Haesler.
Beyond that, the museum's ambitions are high, and the plan is to create an international center for the global history of dentistry.
"Maybe we will find a new location for our museum," Haesler said, who says anywhere in the world would come into consideration. "We need a reasonable base for our collection. What we are getting here at the moment is more like euthanasia."
