I was reading a piece on the Esotouric website today about their fabulous find of a quack medical clinic at the Dutch chocolate shop, and it reminded me of what I found when I had a look around the former main office of “Painless Parker”, the early 20th century showman/dentist/marketing genius (and surely the only dentist to have a movie made about him – sort of).

It’s still operating as a dentist today and is as busy as ever: the kind Dr. Lee let me have a look around. I wrote a piece about it for BBC.com (it’s here), but they only published about half of what I submitted – I really got into the tale of Parker, who is almost forgotten now, but was super-famous in his day.

Painless Parker’s huge office in downtown L.A. – still a dentist’s today!

Parker, a showman who wore a necklace of teeth, advertised relentlessly – a rarity at the time.

Double doors in the surgery….

The corridoe shows the many individual rooms that have alway seen many patients – mainly poor and working class.

Beautiful amber windows.

A gorgeous old clock.

A strange ladder to the roof.

Teeth! Well, casts of teeth anyway. Dr Lee, the current dentist, is as busy as Parker was.