Spring 2013 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine

Left, the exterior of Tufts College Dental School, 1918;
below left, women students from the dental and medical
schools in 1917, with Erna Neumann front row, far left;
below right, Neumann at Commencement, June 17, 1918.
Above, some
of Neumann’s
dental tools;
right, the
dental school
infirmary, as
shown in the
1918 Dentufts
yearbook.
the governess
goes to school
Erna Neumann and her sister Kathe arrived
in Boston on April 9, 1914. They had left
Germany to spend a year in the United States
as governesses. Their first stop after docking
was for a drink, and Erna was able to give
America a hint of her copious stores of pluck
when the waiter refused to serve her a beer
because she was not yet 20.
“What” she asked incredulously. “And
this should be a free country”
Still, she found America intoxicating.
“Everything was just so delightful for us,”
she recalls on a scratchy audiotape, her accent
only slightly mellowed with age.
Just a few months later, though, war broke
out in Europe. Their family thought it would
be safer for the sisters to stay away for a while.
After all, how long could the war last
But the fighting dragged on, and the sisters
were soon cut off from their family.
Neumann needed a plan for her future. She
was interested in dental school, but she had
only $225 in the bank from her governess
job, an amount that would barely pay the first
year’s tuition. A minister she had befriended
encouraged her to apply anyway. Deciding
which school wasn’t much of a problem.
There were only two dental schools in the
area, and only one accepted “girls.”
“So,” the minister said, “your choice is
Tufts.”
Neumann didn’t sleep for a few nights
after she was accepted. “I almost thought
lightning struck me,” she writes. “Can you
imagine the decision to make, all alone in
this country” In the end she enrolled, with
the understanding that she could stay with
the minister’s family, sharing a bed with his
sister-in-law and paying $3 a week for room
and board while her money lasted.
The 1918 dental class began as a group of
237 men and seven women. In the Dentufts
yearbook, her classmates describe their first
gathering, in September 1915: “When …
each of us ran our eyes over the throng, all
invariably stopped to rest a moment longer
on the blushing countenance of our Erna; of
course she looked down quite demurely.”
Yet soon, they wrote, she was known for
her “assiduous application to her studies.”
One of their first assignments was to carve
teeth out of ivory in the “Technic” laboratory.
She recounts the groans to be heard
when an instructor put his calipers to the
carvings and proclaimed, “Sir, this is just a
trifle too deep here—start a new one!”
The students were also charged with making
their own dental instruments. Neumann
recalled these tools being dark-colored
(stainless steel not yet readily available) and
not things they used in practice.
Neumann writes fondly of Professor
George Bates, who taught histology, and
Professor Robert Andrews, who taught
physiology. (Both men are honored every
year at Tufts on Bates-Andrews Day, which
celebrates and showcases the work of
ElEctric drills bEing not yEt common for studEnts,
nEumann and hEr classmatEs had to purchasE
hEavy, pEdal-drivEn machinEs—not unlikE
spinning whEEls—to powEr thEir dEntal drills.
26 tufts dental medicine spring 2013