Bombing Bertie the germ

Ki mua

Whai muri

In the 1920s the Department of Health also began an advertising campaign to encourage healthy eating and personal dental care, utilising posters, exhibitions at agricultural shows, health weeks and lectures. The campaigns continued into the 1960s, increasingly using radio, film and television.

'Bertie the germ' was a constant focus of attention in Department of Health advertisements aimed at children in the 1940s and 1950s. Cleaning your teeth and eating fresh fruit and vegetables were a way of keeping Bertie the germ at bay and avoiding tooth decay. In this poster, developed by Railway Studios for the Department of Health in the 1940s, patriotism associated with the Second World War is harnessed to advance the case for fresh fruit and vegetables, which are dropped by a bomber plane on the unsuspecting Bertie.

The radio health talk from the 1950s focuses on how appearance is enhanced by healthy teeth and advocates tooth brushing and eating fresh fruit and vegetables – the bombs unleashed on Bertie the germ.

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Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Reference: 35649

Poster: Alexander Turnbull Library, Eph-C-DENTAL-1950s-02

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Comments

Graeme L
25 October 2015

Funny how some early childhood memories remain vivid for your entire life. I clearly remember Bertie when I was a six year old in the mid-1960s and I well remember watching those cartoon bombers diving in. I remember the schoolroom, where I sat, where the screen was and I remember that the weather was nice outside. I watched with delight. The dental nurse at our school however did not leave fond memories and there was always a simmering low-grade fear of being called into her clinic. She was the person I most feared in the school. Well except for Miss Cavender. Miss Cavender was an “old-school” teacher who would cane you for almost anything. Once she caned me for accidentally touching a girl's feet during the afternoon lie-down. I was only five and I was a really good little boy and never ever deserved it. So much for the good old days. In class, rather than concentrate on what the teacher was saying, I would look out at the Dental Clinic – every kid in the school could see the clinic from their class window – and try to catch sight of any kid who might emerge to see which direction they headed. I would watch them until they disappeared out of sight and into the corridor. An nervous wait followed by a knock at the door would reveal the name of next victim. There is simply no possible way to to describe that horrible anxious feeling – from a little kids point of view – when you heard your own name called out. If there was no knock then some poor kid from another class had been called and so I could relax for the next twenty minutes or so until next one emerged. In the autumn of 1968 – or it might have been 1967 – my name was again called, timidly I walked across the tennis courts to the small weatherboard dental clinic and up the steps into that spiky surgery. I remember it was 9:15 AM and I was feeling very unlucky as I was the very first patient of the day - but this cannot be the true time as will become apparent. Not standing on ceremony the nurse decided to remove one of my teeth and attaching a suitable clamp she started pulling, and she pulled and pulled and pulled. But her arms got tired so she decided to have a rest. With my mouth wide open and instruments poking out, I watched as she went about her chores, putting instruments into the slot of the steam steriliser and the like. After a while she turned back and levering against my head, pulled and yanked again but after a few minutes her arms got tired and so off she went, leaving me sitting there, again, mouth wide open, stuffed full of whatever she could cram in. She tried again and again and again and I thought it would never end but finally she decided that the tooth just wasn't going to budge and so she disconnected her utensils and told me to go home "and take this note, you're going to have to go to the dentist." I was a good little boy who did what he was told and so, a bit dazed, I made my way down the steps of that clinic stumbling like a Saturday night drunk along the short path to the small gate that went out into Galileo St. The wind had come up and the autumn leaves were falling from the trees and clattering across the ground. It was cold and the sky was quite grey overhead. I looked around and noticed that were no people anywhere, the school was completely empty and I realised that school had finished for the day. I had been sitting in that chair all day. Could that be possible? A feeling wielded up in my chest and into my throat as I panicked. I realised that I was going to be very late home and that would mean the “strap” from my mum and so I tried to hurry but I was so weak I had trouble staying upright. Hanging onto the fence I made my way along the street and slowly made my way up to the corner of Jordan Street. The light was fading and I was anxious. I looked around again but there was still no one about. My head hanging down and groggy I stood facing the fence and looked at the wire I was holding. I tried to gather myself. I had never before nor since felt so alone… And that's when everything went blank. I have no memory what happened next and I don't know how I got home or what happened in the following days. But I do know that my fear of the dental nurse was turned into a lifelong morbid fear of the dentist. I had only just turned eight years old and I really was a good little boy. But I expect I was playing happily days later like nothing ever happened. Adults think that children are resilient and as they watch them play in the school playground, they think they're all-right. They think that, because children seem to play so happily, they "get-over" anything negative that happens to them, but the truth is some haven't and some never will. So thankyou (name of town withheld) Primary School and the NZ health system. I am sure there are thousands of stories just like this from many 1960s NZ primary schools. It was not a time of prosperity and large swathes of people from all walks of life struggled. In those days single mothers were “strongly encouraged” to give up their babies and child "interference" – it is now emerging – went undetected. And children in general were managed with strict military-style discipline. So my story is one of insignificance when put into perspective. It was a time when everybody beat their kids, teachers beat their pupils and almost everybody suffered hardship to some degree. It was the zeitgeist. Funnily I have good quality teeth and when I asked my very caring dentist why I had so many fillings he told me that the dental nurses drilled holes in everybody's teeth – whether they needed them or not – as a way of perpetuating the system. Whether that's true or not, I do not know. If that did happen I suspect it was very rare. I personally know one of the Australian dentists who came over to train the dental nurses back then and he told me they were “a great bunch of girls.” And I am sure the authorities genuinely thought they were doing the right thing for the health of children at that time. The free milk in hindsight may not have been such a good idea. And there is some scuttlebutt that fluoride might be calcifying a small gland in the brain. But I expect they were good people who made policy for what they believed were the right reasons. In this story it matters not that some of the details in my memory may be fallible or that I was probably more fearful than most; all that matters is that the “hurt” was real and long lasting. From my perspective that childhood memory has not faded and has quickly flashed-by in my mind thousands of times over the past 50 years, always beginning with Bertie and the those bombers and ending with that cold autumn day, detailed and never changing. Thankfully, children today have greater protection and their individual needs are taken into consideration, but the 1960s in comparison was a god-awful time to be a child. At least that’s how I remember it. I never forgot Bertie the germ. 26 October 2015

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Kōrero: Dental care