MoHMA.org

Category: Dental
Estimated Date: 1830
Name: Tooth Key

Description: 5.75” long steel tooth key with angled shank and an end with standard claw for gripping the tooth. The handle is cylindrical with slight taper to each end, 3.5” long, scored on each end and made of ebony. A rough guess of the age of a tooth key can be made from the shape. The earliest ones were straight. Then later in the nineteenth century it was appreciated that this resulted in adjacent teeth being broken during extraction. The curved shank was introduced to avoid this.

Reference 1: 303