While the field of dentistry has continued to evolve, many old products and procedures that were once considered perfectly safe and healthy have been discarded as dangerous. Today we find many products that occupy something of a “middle-ground” in this regard (mercury-based fillings, for example).

Despite the fact that dental care still hasn’t been entirely perfected, we should be grateful for the fact that we aren’t limited to the comparatively barbaric forms of dentistry practiced in the distant past with tools as crude as sharpened rocks or the “dental key” (named as such because it resembled a large wooden key that would be fastened to the tooth for extraction by means of twisting the tooth until it shattered).

Here are some often overlooked innovations in modern dentistry that shouldn’t be taken for granted.