Clinic fills museum gap

A new display and one that may give nightmares to those who went to school in the 1940s is pulling out all stops at the Tauranga Historic Village museum. It is a 1940s-style dental clinic complete with the equipment used during that period. The idea was brushed up by retired dental nurse Mrs Joy Macgregor four years ago and the clinic has been welcomed by the museum to complement the old schoolhouse. It is a typical one nurse clinic said Mrs Macgregor.

Dental nurses the length and breadth of New Zealand who graduated in 1940 have helped the clinic”s creation. The idea began to bite about 18 months ago when Mrs Macgregor ran a reunion for those nurses: with whom she graduated. Any reunion money left over would go into setting up the clinic, those attending the reunion agreed. Some equipment was donated by the dental nurses” principal training school in Wellington and ' the Health Department in Rotorua. Mrs Macgregor was keen to get the display set up before the dental system is phased out in its present form. “Clinics like this are part and parcel of New Zealand history.

The hand-pieces of the foot-operated drill were the hardest thing to procure, Mrs Macgregor“ said “ Proving of great interest to the middle-aged generation who would have been the patients of that period, the clinic would probably bring a chuckle to today's school children who attend clinics light years ahead.

Photos curtsey Graham Macgregor.