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St. Paul dentist Olga Lentz, with a patient. St. Paul, Minnesota, circa 1890.
Olga was one of the first (if not the first, need to verify that) lady dentists in Minnesota!
This is a wonderful photo of her at work. Below is the complete text of an 1889 newspaper article about her.

A GIRL DENTIST.
Who is Pretty and Popular, and Has an Income of $5,000 a Year.
She fills a Tooth for a Reporter, and Chats Pleasantly About Her Business.

A dentist is no longer a king of terrors. She is a queen of beauty, says the New York Morning Journal. How pleasant to see a sweet, delicate, girlish face bent over yours as you lean back in the fatal chair of torture! How delightful to gaze up into tender blue or black eyes, and feel that soft tendrils of hair are sweeping your brow like a summer zephyr!

It is any wonder that young lady dentists are successful, and that their number is constantly on the increase? New York supports several, and it was to one of the number that I went not long ago for advice on the subject of a tooth.
The house to which I was directed was a small high-stoop, brown stone dwelling, with the dentist’s name on a silver plate. A neat, white-capped handmaiden opened the door and I was ushered into a pretty parlor in which dainty scarfs and bits of bric-a-brack, comfortable chairs and easels with large photographs upon them made a charming nook in which to meditate over the approaching terrors of the dentist’s chair.
“Will you walk this way?” said a sweet voice.
A pretty, fluffy blonde head was thrust between the folding doors at the back of the drawing-room. I complied with the request and was soon seated in a big chair opposite a high window.
It gave me a new and pleasurable sensation to feel those white and dainty fingers entering my mouth and adjusting a little round mirror for examination. They seemed good enough to eat. And when the soft cheek nearly touched mine it was all I could do to restrain myself from jumping up and hugging the lovely young dentist on the spot.
“Let me know if I hurt you,” said the dentist soothingly, as she began to scrape away at the offending tooth.
I was so fascinated by the sight of her pretty, deft wrist directly under my nose that I could have borne any amount of torture without a murmur. There were muscles like steel in that pretty wrist, by the way.
“What led you to become a dentist?” I asked, as the charming operator turned away for a bit of cotton.
“Love for the work,” she replied. “Teeth have always had a charm for me. When I was a child I was always examining cats’ and dogs’ teeth. I filled a tooth for a pet dog of my own once and every member of my family came to me when anything was wrong with his or her dental organs. I used to prescribe for toothache for half the neighborhood in which I lived in Western New York.”
A bit of perfumed cotton went into my sore tooth and stopped conversation for the moment.
“Where did you learn dentistry?” I asked, as the sweet young dentist (she was not more than 25) wiped her hands with a soft sponge dipped in lavender water.
“I graduated from the dental college at Philadelphia,” replied the young lady. “The New York College of Dentistry does not, you know, admit women. I had to go to Philadelphia to study, but I returned to New York to practise, because the field is wider here. I have been a dentist for five years, and my practise has steadily increased, so that I now make about $5,000 a year by my profession.”
I stole a glance at the slight wrists which looked so incapable of grappling with molars.
“Do you pull teeth as well as fill them?” I asked.
“Not often,” said the dentist, giving a shake to her cream-colored India silk draperies that were caught in the arm of the chair. “It would not pay me to strain my wrist for a sort of work that can be done by almost anyone. There is nothing artistic in the process of extracting teeth – any bungler can do it. I pull teeth for children more often than for grown people. Milk teeth are no trouble to pull.”
“What sort of people do you number among your customers?”
“All sorts – ladies, children, a few gentlemen, and a large number of school-girls of the strong-minded, independent sort. Most of my clients are recommended to me by others. I do not, as a rule, care to treat strangers, especially men.”
“Then why did you treat me?” I inquired.
The blush rose-tint on the fair face deepened and there was a merry twinkle in the blue eyes.
“Because Mary, that’s my maid, gave a good report of you. We dentists have to use tact and discrimination as much as other people.”
With this the young lady handed me my bill, which she had been making out. I paid it and put the receipted document in my pocket as carefully as if it had been a love letter, and thus ended my first visit to the charming girl dentist, but it was not my last.

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Photo from the vintage medical/dental/anatomy section of our archive. Not yet a Thanatos Archive member? Please consider subscribing at: http://www.thanatos.net/membership

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Two post mortem photos of the same boy. The tintype on the left was purchased by The Thanatos Archive in 2002,  the CDV in 2018.
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This isn’t just any lizard in a casket, this is Old Rip (named after Rip Van Winkle – keep reading to find out why…), the horned lizard.

OR’s story is a fascinating but sad one. In 1897, he belonged to a 4-year-old boy, the son of a county clerk in Eastland, Texas. In July of that year it was decided to include Rip, who was still alive at the time, in a time capsule that was cemented into the cornerstone of the new courthouse.

Thirty one years pass, and in 1928 the courthouse was scheduled to be demolished, which drew a crowd of over 3000 who came to see the time capsule opened; bets were placed on the fate of Old Rip….. the capsule was cracked open and there was OR… still ALIVE after so many years inside his tomb, in a state of hibernation… healthy, with worn down horns and a broken leg, probably from trying to escape.

Old Rip became a mini celebrity, touring the country, meeting the president and having a write up in Ripley’s Believe it Or Not!

Sadly, only eleven months after he was released from the capsule, Rip died of pneumonia. He was embalmed and placed in the velvet lined glass top casket, as seen in this original 1929 photograph from my collection. Last I heard he is still on display at the courthouse!

Sound too fantastic to be true? Maybe… but apparently there have been many cases of lizards, frogs and other reptiles hibernating for many years. I remember reading some stories about frogs impossibly found inside sealed rocks deep underground, inside coal mines and quarries… even a story about a pterodactyl stumbling out of a rock and trying to fly off before collapsing and dying… (OK, there’s no way that one really happened, but I love it anyway).

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Two 1932 snapshot photos, children with their deceased mother. Mother’s name was Anna.. three of the children are identified as Phillip, Lin? and Dietrich.. surname and location unknown.
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