Tooth Extraction Tools [Ancient Inventions Series]

What Tooth Extraction Tools Are

Tooth extraction tools are dental and surgical hand instruments made to remove teeth or tooth roots from the jaw. The group includes older devices such as the dental pelican and tooth key, as well as later forceps, elevators, luxators, and related oral surgery instruments.

The invention is best understood as a family of tools, not one object. A pelican, a key, and a pair of extraction forceps do not work in the same way. They share the same goal, but their shapes, motions, risks, and historical settings are different.

Early extraction tools answered a direct medical need: tooth pain could become severe, infection could spread, and damaged teeth could interfere with eating. Before reliable restorative dentistry, antibiotics, modern anesthesia, and advanced imaging, removing a tooth was often one of the few available responses.

The Problem These Tools Answered

Before specialized extraction tools, tooth removal relied on fingers, simple pincers, general surgical forceps, or improvised instruments. These methods gave the operator limited control. A tooth could break. A root could remain. Nearby tissue could be damaged. The problem was not only pain; it was mechanical control.

A tooth is not a loose peg. It is anchored in the alveolar bone by roots and supporting tissues. The shape of the tooth, the number of roots, the condition of the crown, and the position in the mouth all affect removal. Early dental instruments tried to solve this by adding three useful features:

• Grip: a claw, beak, or blade that could hold part of the tooth.
• Leverage: a handle and fulcrum that could transfer force.
• Access: a shape that could reach inside the mouth more precisely than a general tool.

Earlier Ideas Before Specialized Extraction Tools

The simplest earlier idea was the pincer: a tool that grips and pulls. That idea is older than dentistry as a profession. General forceps and pincers appear in many craft and surgical traditions because the same basic action is useful in metalworking, medicine, repair, and household work.

For teeth, simple pulling had limits. Many teeth are slippery, broken, deeply rooted, or hard to reach. Pulling straight upward does not always match the shape of the socket. This is why later instruments combined gripping with controlled leverage.

The dental pelican and tooth key were not merely “pliers for teeth.” They were attempts to create a mechanical advantage inside a small, difficult space. The improvement was real, but it was incomplete. The same leverage that helped remove a tooth could also damage nearby tissue if poorly controlled.

From Pelicans to Keys and Forceps

The dental pelican was one of the best-known early specialized extraction tools. The Science Museum Group describes a surviving double-ended steel dental pelican from Europe, dated 1701–1800, and explains that pelicans are believed to date back to the 1300s. Their name came from the supposed resemblance to a pelican’s beak.[b]

A pelican used a claw and a fulcrum-like part. Its purpose was to move the tooth sideways rather than simply pull it upward. Over time, makers changed the number of claws, the handle, the bolster, and the adjustability of the instrument.

The tooth key became especially common in the 18th and 19th centuries. A Science Museum Group dental key object, made in Paris between 1825 and 1870, has a wooden handle and steel shaft. The museum explains that dental keys were commonly used in the 18th and 19th centuries and that later curved shafts and adjustable claws were introduced to reduce unwanted pressure on nearby teeth.[c]

Forceps eventually replaced keys as the preferred extraction instruments because they could be made for different tooth shapes. Instead of relying on a large turning motion, forceps could grip more directly and adapt to anatomy. The shift was not instant. Older tools remained in use in some places after better instruments existed.

How the Main Tools Worked in Simple Terms

The early mechanism can be explained without turning it into a practical instruction. A tooth extraction tool had to solve a physical problem: a tooth is held by roots and tissue, and the tool had to separate it from that support.

Dental Pelican

The dental pelican used a claw and a supporting part. Its form allowed sideways leverage. The name came from its bird-like shape, not from a maker named Pelican. This is a useful detail because many short descriptions treat the name as decorative, while the name actually points to the tool’s visible form.

Dental Key

The dental key resembled a door key in both shape and motion. It had a handle, shaft, bolster, and claw. The claw gripped the tooth, and the turning movement aimed to loosen or remove it. The University of the Pacific’s Virtual Dental Museum describes the original toothkey as appearing around 1740, spreading from England to the Continent by the mid-1700s and to America later in the century.[d]

Extraction Forceps

Extraction forceps look simpler than keys, but their design is more anatomically specific. They use paired beaks and handles. Different forms developed for upper teeth, lower teeth, roots, molars, incisors, and other dental situations. Their value came from fit, not just force.

Elevators and Luxators

Elevators and luxators are linked to leverage rather than gripping. Their role is to loosen or mobilize a tooth or root. The Macaulay Dental Museum explains that elevators loosen a tooth or root before other means such as forceps, and that elevators are still used in dental extractions today.[e]

Main Types and Variations

Before and After Tooth Extraction Tools

The change brought by tooth extraction tools was practical rather than glamorous. These instruments did not make dental extraction easy or safe by modern standards. They did create a path from improvised removal toward purpose-built dental instruments.

Materials, Mechanism, and Technical Principle

The material history of extraction tools is also a history of reliability. Working ends needed to be hard enough to hold shape under force. Handles needed to be strong and comfortable enough to control. Older examples often combine steel or iron with wood, horn, bone, or ivory.

The main technical principles were simple:

• Lever action: using a handle to magnify force at the working end.
• Fulcrum support: placing force through a supporting point, as seen in pelicans and keys.
• Gripping fit: shaping the working end to hold part of the tooth.
• Anatomical specialization: adjusting the form for upper, lower, front, back, or root structures.

The most important design change was the move away from one powerful motion toward instruments that could match the mouth more closely. The later value of forceps was not that they were more dramatic. It was that they could be more specific.

Early Uses and Social Setting

Tooth extraction tools were used in a social setting very different from modern dental clinics. Medieval and early modern tooth removal could be performed by barber-surgeons, traveling tooth-pullers, surgeons, or early dental practitioners. In many communities, the person extracting a tooth was not a licensed dentist in the modern sense.

Related articles: Dental Fillings (Etruscans) [Ancient Inventions Series]

That changed gradually as dentistry became a profession with schools, societies, licensing systems, and specialized equipment. The tool itself is part of that story. A dental key in a traveling operator’s kit and a set of shaped forceps in a trained dental practice belong to different stages of care.

The change was also educational. Instrument makers, dental authors, and museums preserved examples that show how knowledge moved between surgery, craft, dentistry, and manufacturing. This is why a tooth extraction tool belongs not only to medical history, but also to the history of hand tools and precision instrument making.

How the Tools Spread and Changed

Dental tools spread through several channels: surgical books, apprenticeships, instrument catalogues, trade networks, dental schools, military and hospital practice, and museum collections. The tooth key is a clear example. It began as a European instrument and spread widely because it was compact, memorable in shape, and quick in operation.

Changes over time were often small but meaningful:

• Straight shafts gave way to curved or bent shafts.
• Fixed claws developed into adjustable or interchangeable claws.
• General gripping tools gave way to tooth-specific forceps.
• Heavy leverage tools declined as anesthesia, antisepsis, professional training, and better surgical planning developed.

The University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum notes that tooth keys were introduced in the early 1700s, that extra curves were added by the late 18th century to reduce damage to the jaw and adjacent teeth, and that forceps rapidly replaced keys by the early 1900s in Britain.[f]

What Changed Because of Tooth Extraction Tools

Specialized extraction tools changed oral care in several concrete ways. They created dedicated instrument categories, helped dentists think in terms of tooth anatomy, and pushed dental practice away from improvised pulling.

The strongest long-term effects were:

• Professional specialization: extraction became a dental and oral surgery procedure rather than only a general act of pulling.
• Instrument design: makers created tools for different teeth, roots, and surgical situations.
• Teaching and classification: dental schools could train students with named instrument families.
• Regulation and standards: modern dental hand instruments became part of controlled medical-device systems.
• Related care: anesthesia, antisepsis, radiography, and restorative dentistry changed when and why extraction was performed.

Modern dental coding and device systems still reflect the historical separation between removal with elevators and forceps and more involved surgical removal. The American Dental Association’s guide to extractions describes erupted tooth or exposed-root extraction in relation to elevation and/or forceps removal, while distinguishing it from procedures involving tissue or bone removal.[g]

Common Misunderstandings

Modern Descendants and Regulated Instrument Families

Modern extraction instruments include forceps, elevators, luxators, periotomes, root-tip picks, surgical hand instruments, and device-assisted systems. Their design is shaped by clinical training, sterilization requirements, material standards, and medical-device regulation.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists tooth extractor surgical forceps and dental surgical elevators under dental hand instruments, regulation number 872.4565, device class 1.[h] This shows how far the invention group has moved from craft-made objects toward regulated medical instrument categories.

Modern descendants also changed the purpose of extraction. In older practice, extraction often stood almost alone. In modern dentistry, it may connect to radiography, local anesthesia, infection control, orthodontics, oral surgery, bone preservation, implant planning, and prosthetic replacement. The instrument is now one part of a wider clinical system.

Related Inventions

Sources and Verification

1. [a] extraction: Macaulay Dental Museum — Used to verify the early historical framing of dental extraction, the pelican and tooth key as early specialized extraction instruments, and the 1363 and 1483 references. (Reliable because it is an institutional dental museum page from the Medical University of South Carolina library.)
2. [b] Dental Pelican for Tooth Pulling — Used to verify the surviving steel dental pelican object, its European dating, and the explanation of its name and mechanism. (Reliable because it is an official Science Museum Group collection object record.)
3. [c] Dental key | Science Museum Group Collection — Used to verify the 1825–1870 Paris dental key object, materials, common 18th–19th century use, and later design changes. (Reliable because it is an official Science Museum Group collection object record.)
4. [d] Toothache and Trauma: A History of the Toothkey — Used to verify the toothkey’s approximate appearance around 1740, spread from England, and historical transition toward forceps. (Reliable because it is a university dental museum exhibit page.)
5. [e] extraction: Macaulay Dental Museum — Used to verify the basic historical role of elevators and forceps in dental extraction. (Reliable because it is an institutional dental museum page from the Medical University of South Carolina library.)
6. [f] Dental collection further information – Victoria Gallery & Museum – University of Liverpool — Used to verify the University of Liverpool museum account of pelicans, tooth keys, curved shafts, and the early 20th-century replacement of keys by forceps in Britain. (Reliable because it is a university museum collection page.)
7. [g] Guide to Extractions – Tooth and Remnants — Used to verify modern terminology distinguishing forceps/elevator removal from more involved surgical extraction categories. (Reliable because it is an American Dental Association publication.)
8. [h] Product Classification – FDA — Used to verify that tooth extractor surgical forceps and dental surgical elevators appear within FDA dental hand instrument classification records. (Reliable because it is an official U.S. Food and Drug Administration device classification database.)