“All the Fussing with My Face”: Lucina Ball’s Dental Woes of 1887

Who doesn’t dread an emergency trip to the dentist? Although dentistry in the United States has improved greatly in the past 100 years, most people can probably relate to the inherent anxiety produced at the thought of having to go see a dentist about a chronic toothache (I know I do!).

I’ve found myself thinking about the Ball family’s teeth quite a bit since I began studying the letters of the Ball brother’s eldest sibling, Lucina (1847-1901). Minnetrista’s Heritage Collection Archives is home to a rich collection of private letters written by members of the Ball family. They were dedicated letter writers, exchanging notes weekly, and sometimes even more frequently! With seven siblings, loving parents, and a large extended family, there are hundreds of surviving letters that document the everyday lives of the Ball family, sometimes in great detail. One grouping of those letters recount—quite vividly—Lucina Ball’s dental emergency in 1887. This quirky little drama from the archives, now over 130 years old, is still fascinating and painfully relatable.

Mary Frances and Joseph Mauck, date unknown. Minnetrista Heritage Collection, 9113-9114.

In early February 1887, Lucina traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota to visit her baby sister, Mary Frances Ball Mauck (1860-1926) and her family, including newborn niece Ruth Viola, just two months old.

In her letters to their other siblings, Lucina wrote about keeping busy during the visit, lending a hand with the housework, doting on baby Ruth, and even helping her brother-in-law with clerical work at his office. However, her busy days were quickly disrupted when her “face began to swell and throb as it did a year ago when Ma was out here.” The discomfort became severe enough that she quickly “went to a dentist to ask what he thought could be done.” This pain kicked off weeks of emergency appointments with a local dental surgeon that involved lancing her gums, the frustration of popped stitches, new fillings, a pulled wisdom tooth, a persistent hole in her gums that just wouldn’t heal (ouch!), and the delicate dance of trying to eat with a sore mouth.

Some of Lucina’s descriptions of her dental work were graphic and painful sounding. Like she did with many other things in her life however, Lucina seems to have taken an academic interest in the work, requesting medical journals to read and doing her best to understand the process.

In the late 1880s, dentistry in the United States was on the cusp of professionalization, moving towards embracing more systematized and rigorous educational requirements for dentists earning their DDS. The first American dental school, the Baltimore School of Dental Surgery, was founded in 1840, and just 40 years later, the number of schools around the country had grown to 28. Nevertheless, when Lucina visited her Minnesota dentist in 1887, preventative oral hygiene routines were not yet common, leading to the prevalence of dental disease and tooth decay in American mouths. Electricity was also not yet commonly used in dental offices, so foot-treadle drills were standard, making tooth-drilling slow and painful. And extractions, let’s not even think about those, OUCH!

Dental treadle drill, English made between 1890 and 1940. Science Museum Group Collection.

Lucina Ball in the 1880s around the time of her dental drama! Minnetrista Heritage Collection, 9768-9776.

Thankfully, by the time Lucina returned to New York City a few months later to take up her position as Secretary at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, her toothaches seem to have been cured.

Good handwritten letters have a way of preserving the emotions of their writers on paper, and these Ball family letters from 1887 certainly document Lucina’s family’s concerns about her pain. As she was able to reassure them eventually, she weathered the trouble just fine and there was no need to overreact. As she told her mother, Maria Bingham Ball, “you seem to have a most mistaken idea of my face!”