Harvard Dental Museum
The museum was dismantled in 1937 due to the changing nature of dental education at Harvard, and its collections were placed in storage or dispersed.
On June 18, 1891, Mr. Boardman was voted to be the third curator of the Harvard Dental Museum and would hold the position for the next thirty years.
During his time as a curator he expanded numerous collections but did report a lack of adequate space and money to fully grow the museum to its potential.
[6] On August 14, 1922, Dr. Boardman’s time as a curator ceased when he died while traveling back home to Boston after attending a meeting for the American Dental Association in Los Angeles.
In addition to expanding the collections, he updated the catalogs and proposed that the museum loan out specimens to instructors for their lectures.
[8] Dr. Kurt H. Thoma (1883 – 1972) was the final curator of the museum but did not start until April 1937 due to changes in policy and management.
[6] The museum was initially meant to only serves a space for storage of materials used by instructors for the Harvard Dental School.
The cases also needed to have measures that would ensure pests were not able to enter them so they also had “poison patented dust proofing.” [14] The cost for the metal cases would be $918 and the wood bases would total $528 for a grand total of $1446 [15] which would have had to been paid within 30 days of all the work being completed[16] and included delivery and setup.
After the initial donation by Arthur Cabot, the specimens, tools and memorabilia grew to amount to over 3000 artifacts.
[1] The museum also served as a repository for dental student’s work: a requirement for their graduation was to submit a mold or tool they made or used during their matriculation.
After a winter journey to Alaska, then curator Adelbert Fernald, discovered an 11-foot 2-inch long Mastodon tusk buried in a river bank.
[5] The 300-pound tusk was housed at the Longwood Ave location of the Harvard Dental museum until the disassembly of the facility in 1937.
[17] Under curator Adelbert Fernald, molds and instruments used in facial reconstructions during the Great War were contributed to the growing museum.
Established by curator Adelbert Fernald, a replica of an 1822’s dentist office was incorporated into the Dental Museum during renovations at the Longwood Ave location in the 1920s.
[1] Dr. John White Webster was on trial for the murder of George Parkman in 1850 in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
George Parkman went missing on November 23, 1849 and his remains were found later at Harvard Medical School in the Dr. Webster's laboratory.
In the Announcement of the Dental School of Harvard University of 1937–1938 there is still mention of a curator and visiting hours of the museum.
The curator in 1937–1938, Kurt H. Thoma, remained on the staff of the dental school in 1939–1940 as the Charles A. Brackett Professor of Oral Pathology.
