key: cord-0020168-a27xyu16
authors: Mattos-Vela, M. A.
title: Open access
date: 2021-08-27
journal: Br Dent J
DOI: 10.1038/s41415-021-3384-2
sha: e261dc36b91776430a7d3a57549beb340748ce30
doc_id: 20168
cord_uid: a27xyu16

nan

prejudices and depravation detailed in this novel, but for anyone regardless of their background who endured certain NHS dental practices during the 1980s and 1990s. The dental presentations unambiguously detail those injuries from beatings, eg the 'Glasgow smile', while the particulars of the questionable destructive clinical practices of those times, of exodontia with attempts at prosthetic rehabilitation by NHS dentists in Scotland, leave little for any reader -let alone those who are clinically experiencedto imagine. Discussing such clinical presentations with the author, one dental question remained unanswered: 2 were porcelain teeth (ever) provided on the NHS in Scotland? Further inquiries revealed the provision of porcelain teeth on the NHS to be highly unlikely, principally due to cost. 3 Contact with Wrights-Cottrell in Dundee, a firm providing materials for use in NHS dentures, supported this view.

It is a privilege to be able to contribute to the accuracy of any inspiring work and humbling to be able to do so with a Booker Prize-winning novel. With further editions of Shuggie Bain in press, should any reader have information confirming these points of dental care in the NHS, then Douglas Stewart's editor, Anna Stein would welcome such information. 4 She can be contacted at: anna.stein@icmpartners.com.

In seeking and providing these answers, the advocacy we now practise for our dental patients might be extended to advocacy for the central characters in a novel that has become a work of literary significance and historical reference for tomorrow's dental professionals. Shuggie Bain clearly documents that NHS dentistry practised in the last century and those clinical experiences still lie within the living memories of those we care for in 2021, dental patients whose care we must continue appropriately for many years to come.

Sir, I have read with great pleasure your Editorial announcing that the BDJ has become a transformative journal. 1 I celebrate this and congratulate you on the decision. I am an associate professor from a dental school at a public university in Lima, Peru, where we have limited access to many highimpact journals in the dental area due to the required subscription to read their articles. So, initiatives like the ones the BDJ is opting for are going to benefit readers from all over the world, especially those from Latin America.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of scientific publications being open access in order to have all the

Sir, throughout Douglas Stewart's Booker Prize-winning novel, Shuggie Bain, 1 numerous dental presentations are referenced against a backdrop documenting the destruction of communities, following the obliteration of mining and manufacturing industries in Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s.

With an eponymous protagonist coming to terms with being gay, Shuggie's otherness strikes hard against an upbringing and prejudices inherent in the traditional working-class masculinity of those times. His mother Agnes's calamitous alcoholism across two decades is sandwiched into Strathclyde's sectarianism and is presented in details that are candid and clinical. In reading about the violence and tenderness, the sadness and humour, the value of this work for those in clinical practice today isn't that it seeks our sympathy, but that it justly demands our empathy for the characters.

By doing so, in turn, we might gain a deeper understanding and empathy not only for our patients who endured the societal

The Cochrane Collaboration

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