Scent of a Dental Office

In the perpetual battle we wage for a fair share of our patients’ discretionary income, we come up losers more often than not. All we’ve got to offer is health, an engaging smile and function, which on the face of it, ought to be enough. Not when we come up against the big guns of the women’s cosmetic industry. Health, grins and function don’t figure anywhere in the wildly successful advertising campaigns of this business that’s so essential to half our population over 13 years of age. Many of these people are apparently skirmishing with crow’s feet, dry skin and premature wrinkling before they’ve had their first date.

A woman might invest a small fortune in lipstick, lip gloss, lipsheen, lip outline pencils and God knows what else. She might even entertain the idea, however briefly, of having her lips pumped up with silicone for that "pouty" look so popular with frustrated adolescent Britney Spears wannabes. It should come as no surprise that this same woman could, with complete savoir faire, feature just distal to those pampered lips, diastemas, discolored resins, malposed anteriors and missing bicuspids.

Doesn’t this just drive you crazy? She’s got alligator pumps, a 2 carat solitaire, a Gucci bag and gooshy gums. She drives a red Corvette with the top down blowing her $100 hairdo but decides not to have a bridge over there because it doesn’t really show that much. And she’s got all this stuff because the advertising geniuses told her she needed it. Needed it for what? To impress that sexist cipher in her life who thinks a splash of Brut, a grungy T-shirt and jeans even a rock star wouldn’t wear is putting on the dog?

I got to thinking what those Madison Avenue guys could do for us after I read what they were breathlessly telling me about Elizabeth Taylor’s Fragrant Jewel Collection of what they referred to as "decadent scents."

Listen to these descriptions from Sophisticate’s Hairstyle Guide: "Diamonds and Emeralds, with gardenias as its topnote, rich with amber, patchouli and a hint of vanilla; Diamonds and Rubies, with a luscious peach topnote, wrapped in lilac, rose, jasmine and orchids; and Diamonds and Sapphires, which begins with lily of the valley, wrapped in sandalwood, musk, jasmine and ylang ylang." This latter sounds like the name given to a panda by the San Diego Zoo, not something to wrap lilies of the valley in, but I admit to being out of my element here.

I’m thinking maybe we could improve the ambience of our office by wafting some more-sophisticated scents around the place. Basically, we rely on Lysol, something made by Johnson & Johnson called Glade, and a little saucer of eugenol near the air conditioner vent. This gives us a sort of composite fragrance somewhere between an OR at L.A. General and a French bordello --or so I’ve been told.

The Lysol overpowers odors by substituting a more powerful one of its own in accordance with the deodorant industries’ credo of "Hit ’em with your topnote." According to the can, the topnote here is o-Phenyphenol, which is wrapped around 79 percent ethanol. Glade apparently doesn’t have a topnote, perhaps being like me and not having a clue of what one is. Or if it does, it’s so secret that Johnson won’t even tell Johnson what it is. Eugenol, of course, has the perennial aroma of oil of cloves with just a hint of Easter ham.

We’ve never had any complaints about our office, in fact we had one lady state emphatically, "This place smells just like a dentist's office," which we took as a highest form of compliment. Still, one must keep up with the times, and my feeling is that if we could just get Ms Taylor to come out and look us over and maybe capture the essence of what we are and what we could become, dentistry might take off in entirely unexpected directions with something called Diamonds and Carbides, for example.

I visualize a topnote of formocreosote because of its superb lasting properties. A couple drops spilled anywhere in your office will be as pungent in the early years of the next decade as it is today. We’d combine that with something rich in polymers embraced by the subtle, yet haunting essence of Sultan’s Purevac cleaner, plus just a hint of Ozium. This could be applied with an atomizer or a trowel, whichever is appropriate.

If that doesn’t quite do it smell-wise, a squirt of ylang ylang certainly will. If I can find some.