Oral history: how Tick Begg revolutionised braces and made 1920s Adelaide ‘the orthodontic centre of the world’

A model used by Tick Begg to teach his braces technique at the PR Begg Museum in Adelaide, South Australia. Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian

In medieval Europe, barber-surgeons might cut your hair, shave your face, do a bit of blood-letting and tend to a broken limb.

They might also pull a tooth out with a “pelican” – a crude beak-like shank – or lever it out with an iron “tooth key”. By the 17th century they might just knock it out with a steel punch elevator.