If you really want to know about this sort of thing in 18th Century Britain read The Knife Man by Wendy Moore. It details the medical career of John Hunter and while a lot of the book talks about his development of various medical procedures and extraordinary experiments (he once implanted a tooth into a chickens head, just, you know, to see what would happen) and vast collection of medical oddities it also details his forray into the dental business, of which he was a pioneer. There's a great picture somewhere in the book of a chimney sweep boy being given money to have his tooth yanked out so some old women could have it to replace one of hers.

We owe a great many things to Mr. Hunter in regards to our medical knowledge. If you ever get the chance to visit the Hunterian museum in London do it, it's a quite astonishing place.