It was Friday, the morning that Alumni Weekend began at the UNMC College of Dentistry, and Stan Harn, PhD, was setting up a display of the college’s Dental Museum, which he curates.
In addition to two permanent displays in the college, one a display of five turn-of-the-century dental cabinets and the featuring three display cases of various historical teeth-cleaning products, including flavored tooth powders and toothbrushes carved from cow tibia, Dr. Harn was setting up five more tables of additional implements, such as a set of gold sample dentures and a set of early dental drills.
Dr. Harn conceived the dental museum after attending a history of dentistry course. The course interested him greatly, he said, but during that time dental history courses were being dropped from dental curricula nationwide to make time for more clinical training.
“So in 1977, I wrote a letter to the dean proposing the initiation of a dental museum, and he liked the idea, as did the board of directors of the alumni association. So I was off and running.”
Also, Dr. Harn designed and selected the pieces for a permanent display at the Wigton Heritage Center on UNMC’s Omaha campus called the Stanton D. Harn, PhD, Dental Gallery.
As Dr. Harn laid out the temporary exhibits, several faculty members stopped to greet him. Although he retired from UNMC in 2017, after 45 years of teaching anatomy to dental students, the museum has kept him a recognizable figure.
Several students, who may not have recognized Dr. Harn as easily, did stop to look at the temporary exhibit and ask questions about the various pieces, including a mother-of-pearl teeth-cleaning set that, he told them, likely had never been used – too expensive for actual dental work, they more likely were used as display pieces by dentists looking to impress patients.
“There are always some students who are very interested,” Dr. Harn said. “Dental history is important because it shows where the profession came from, and maybe it can have influence on where it’s going.”
This display for Alumni Weekend represented only a portion of what Dr. Harn calls one of the largest collections of historic dental items dating from the 1850s to the present in the United States.