Doctor Yank: Memoirs of a Millitary Dentist

By Robert Reiss

In Doctor Yank: Memoirs of a Military Dentist, Dr. Robert Reiss writes of his life experiences, from growing up in New York to his service as a military dentist in Panama, the Galapagos Islands, and beyond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Mar 15, 2003
• ISBN: 9781618588081

Book preview

Preface

I have seen only one biography of a dentist. It was the biography of Dr. J. Leon Williams, who was the innovator in using feldspar for making porcelain teeth, and it was given to me by a grateful patient. This is only one of the changes dentistry has undergone during this century. Dr. Louis Grossman wrote an article entitled A Personal History of Dental Practice, which shows the progress that dentistry has made from 1920 until 1980. The article was published in Journal of American Dental Association, Vol. 102, March 1981.

My intent in writing these memoirs is to list some experiences, both medical and biographical, which may be helpful or interesting to others. I hope dentistry is as rewarding a profession for others as it has been for me.

I started this book on an electric typewriter, but the advent of the computer greatly simplified my work. Each of my four sons was helpful in showing me how to use it. The drawings included were culled from letters to my wife and from sketches I made on my travels.

I have often thought about how much knowledge and clinical experience is lost when a practitioner passes on, and about how beneficial it would be for each of them to have first recorded their successful nostrums. I hope mine may be of some use.

Warning: Use of any medical or dental treatment suggestions contained herein must be under the approval and care of the respective physician or dentist.

Chapter I

THE GRAND CONCOURSE AND BOULEVARD

I was born Saturday, December 12, 1914, in a cold water flat in the east Bronx. It wasn’t long until my family moved to 2028 Grand Concourse, which was the first apartment house built on the boulevard. At the time, the service road was paved but the center highway was still a dirt road. The building had a front and a rear entrance, and women would often have their boyfriend drive them home to the front entrance and then go out through the rear entrance to their real home.

Our first apartment there was at the back of the building and our kitchen window overlooked the garbage cans. We soon moved to the front of the house, and the fire escape there was a grandstand seat for the terrific parades each year. From that vantage point, we could easily see cowboys, American Indians in native dress, soldiers, sailors, nurses, veterans, politicians, bands, scouts, WWI army tanks, police on horseback, and the American Red Cross, who always had a big flag spread out to catch pennies.

Growing up, I was the typical busy little boy and had my fair share of injuries and mishaps. My mother had constant opportunities to use her home remedies on me. For example, when I was 3 I choked on two pennies. My mother instantly grabbed me by the feet, turned me upside down, and shook me. When I came down with a high fever, she kept applying cold towels to my forehead to prevent delirium. When I had a bad case of bronchitis, she sat me in a chair, put a blanket over my head and put a pot of steaming tincture of benzoin under the blanket to saturate the atmosphere I was breathing. She also rubbed musterole on my chest. For swollen glands in my neck, she would apply a black salve called Iodex. My father also had a number of home remedies that I utilized from time to time.

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2028 Grand Concourse and Boulevard Corner Bush Street. 1920.

Pimples on the mucous membrane of the nose were treated with Pinaud’s lilac toilet water. Sores on the lips were coated with camphor ice. Sore joints or muscles were soaked with Burrow’s solution. Annoying eye problems were cured with an eye cup and a boric acid and camphor eyewash. Minor cuts were washed with peroxide, dried and covered directly with adhesive tape. For an upset stomach, sodium phosphate was a favorite. Bleeding from shaving nicks (this was before safety razors were invented) was stopped with the application of a styptic pencil, which I still use.

In addition to the usual number of boyhood injuries, I also have a scar on my right middle finger from a broken glass butter dish (plastic had not yet been invented). The scar tissue encased a nerve ending, forming a neuroma; it still gives me great pain when injured. I saw an intern about it years later when I was a dental student at Columbia; he wanted to treat it with radiation. I researched the literature and since nerve tissue is the last tissue to be destroyed by radiation, I decided that it might do more harm than good.

During my childhood, after doing somersaults on the grass one summer, I developed ringworm of the scalp; to treat it, I had to have my head shaved and iodine applied to my scalp. (Years later, iodine would be the only medicine to cure a skin infection that I developed while in Panama.) Also, as a child I had a slight case of scoliosis and flat feet. For the scoliosis, I used to exercise hanging from wall bars with my back to the wall. For the flat feet, I didn’t want to wear arch supports because I felt they made the wearer dependent on their support; instead, I cured it with exercise (up on my toes and down on the outer rim of my feet) My flat feet were diagnosed by the school doctor, who examined all the children’s feet one year by having us