Cultivating a "chairside manner": dental hypnosis, patient management psychology, and the origins of behavioral dentistry in America, 1890-1910.

Discussions regarding the use of hypnotism in dentistry featured prominently in dental journals and society proceedings during the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Many dentists used hypnotic suggestion either as the sole anesthetic for extractions or in conjunction with local and general anesthetics for excavation and cavity filling. With the heralding of humanitarian dentistry and improved local anesthesia around 1905, a number of dentists advocated using suggestion psychology to calm nervous patients and increase their comfort and satisfaction levels while undergoing dental procedures. The practice of hypnotic suggestion with local and general anesthesia in providing patients with increasingly painless procedures constituted the earliest variety of behavioral dentistry, a discipline not fully developed until the closing decades of the twentieth century. Hypnosis and suggestion became driving forces for psychological applications in the formative years of behavioral dentistry.

[Changing methods of pain- and fear-relief in dental treatments based on reports published in 'Fogorvosi Szemle']. / A fájdalom- és félelemmentes fogászati kezelés módszereinek alakulása a Fogorvosi Szemlében megjelent dolgozatok tükrében.

In the dental practice--for more than a 100 years--it has been a vital topic how to prevent, eliminate, or at least relieve pain and fear associated with dental treatments. 'Fogorvosi Szemle,' the scientific journal of the Hungarian Dental Association is now a 100 years old. Authors present how the approaches and methods of relieving pain and fear have changed in the past century, based on the reports published in this journal. The reports are grouped in three main topics: local anaesthetics and sedatives; ambulatory narcosis and sedative analgesia; hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Based on the publications of the last one hundred years, it can be concluded that the Hungarian dental practice has followed the trends and principles of the well-known international dental schools.

Hypnosis, Part I: A historical overview.

The roots of hypnosis go back to the beginning of recorded history and probably beyond. Part I of this three-part series will discuss the origins of the practice of hypnosis and its cultivation through history.