In medieval Europe, barber-surgeons might cut your hair, shave your face, do a bit of blood-letting and tend to a broken limb. They might also pull a tooth out with a "pelican" – a crude beak-like shank – or lever it out with an iron "tooth key". By the 17th century they might just knock it out with a steel punch elevator. It's a winding, gruesome road from these early practitioners of dentistry to today's world of 3D printing, artificial intelligence and robots that can create dental implants. Wayne Sampson, a dental historian and emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide, says the history of dental work goes back much further than the barber-surgeons.