Today found me in the delightful city of Birmingham with the lovely Katrin Lestschinski, the owner Manager of Zahntechnik Lestschinski and facing the dazzling smile of Colin Pocock, an active city dentist.
Katrin was demonstrating the peak of dental technical skills available in her practice, from bridges and crowns to telescopes and dentures.
The most impressive for me was the use of electroplating to build precise and strong pure gold caps that could be used as the foundations of any oral dental implant, from a removable crown to a complete bridge.
The interesting fact of the day that ceramics were a fortuitious discovery by von Tschirnhaus, von Ohain and Boettger in Meissen, alchemists who were looking to transmute other elements to gold! Meissen became famous for its porcelain and of course ceramics are now integral to dentistry. Boettger unfortunately died of poisoning from exposure to the range of poisonous chemicals his work exposed him to before seeing the fruits of his labours.
