Article
A mouthful of humour
The flyer states ‘As you will discover, David Cohen's travels on life's crazy-paved path have provided him with many tales to tell, and when he has regaled those he met along the way with these little stories, every one of which is true, some have told him, you should write a book’.
This reviewer had anticipated a series of anecdotes relating to events in the surgery, and this is indeed the case. However, the first chapters of the book are an interesting potted history of life as a dental student in 1967, including how David entered dental school: this autobiographical history is well worth reading, especially by younger readers who will not be aware of how different things were then. No glove wearing for treatment procedures indeed! Then comes an account of dental practice, the introduction of patients' charges in 1971 and the effect of that in deterring patient attendance. Among the anecdotes, there is one about David's life-changing realization about a patients' ability to pay (and how some can't afford dental treatment) and how he decided not to go to work for someone who, at the start of the interview said, ‘the first thing that we discuss with a patient is … money’. The book continues with tales of the Kodak Carousel projector (for younger readers, these were used in the ‘old days’ before laptops and PowerPoint, when the images were on ‘slides’ these, in turn, being a piece of photographic film framed in cardboard), the purchase of an operating microscope for endodontics, a heart attack in Gibraltar, the tale of two red Ferraris in the car park, evening opening of his dental surgery to make it easier to accommodate hard-working patients (and the higher fail to attend rate), the patient who spent all of the appointment talking (didn't we all have a few of those?!), and many others.
This interesting and entertaining book is written in a tongue-in-cheek, often humorous style, with explanations for a lay audience of what, for example, edentulous means, what an oral surgeon is (not talking about surgery), with the book finishing on (not) retiring. It provides the occasional pseudo-political comment, for example, ‘todays dentists might need keyboard skills (in order to log so much information onto a computer) rather than manual dexterity’. While there is no question that David is an accomplished clinician and researcher (and now, author), with friends and acquaintances across the world, I am somewhat worried about his geography! He mentions driving to Manchester from London, and turning off the air conditioning (to save fuel while driving an American car) at Warrington. I once lived near there – Warrington is north of Manchester and certainly not on my route to Manchester!