DENTISTS HAVE HAD a bum rap down through the ages. The prospect of a check-up fills all but the kinkiest of masochists with an irrational dread. Garlic-breathed, begowned gents wielding unfeasibly large pliers in their hirsute hands inhabit a particularly nasty place in the collective unconscious.
Who could forget Steve Martin's star turn in Little Shop Of Horrors? 'To be a dentist,' he croons, waxing lyrical about the joys of yanking teeth as he prances maniacally about his surgery in crisp linen smock and leather pants. Or Sir Laurence Olivier using dental tools as instruments of torture in Marathon Man. 'Is it safe? Is it safe?'
Few would dispute that dentists have an image problem, and that they need some good PR. Something to convince us we have nothing to fear from the high-pitched whine of the drill, the chalkboard shriek of pick on plaque, the joys of gargling, sore-jawed, on your own blood.
Something, in other words, quite unlike Dentistry Across The Millennium, a grisly trawl through hundreds of years of white-knuckled oral mayhem which might have been subtitled A Brief History Of Pain. The exhibition is on show at the Museum Of Medical Sciences in Caine Lane until December 31, offering endless weekends of fun for those whose idea of a good time is looking at graphic depictions of gingivitis. Lurid posters of ancient dentures, rotting teeth and pus-filled gums are unlikely to assuage the fear and loathing reserved for dentists, but I can guarantee you won't feel like kissing anybody for a while.
Dr Raymond Ma Siu-wing, spokesman for the Hong Kong Dental Association's Dental Health Education Committee, agrees dentists have a public relations problem - one which is completely undeserved, he says.
'I think the problem starts when people are kids,' he says. 'You know, parents make us out as these horrible bogeymen. 'Clean your teeth or the dentist will have to pull them out'. That sort of thing. But I think through education our image is improving. I encourage families to come together for a check-up, it's less scary for kids that way.'
