Ever wonder why Queen Elizabeth I is never smiling in those Renaissance portraits? It’s not because her ruffled collar is too tight. It’s because her teeth were rotten.
That’s the kind of tidbit you can pick up when you visit Dr. Andrew Buckley, perhaps the most talkative dentist on St. Thomas. And one of the most well informed, particularly about his profession.
Citing information from James Wynbrandt’s “The Excruciating History of Dentistry,” which bases a lot of its conclusions on examinations of human remains, Buckley said dental disease was the second biggest killer in Europe in the Middle Ages, as infections in the mouth cause problems in other parts of the body. Famine was No. 1 and “war was a distant third.”
The culprit was all that honey-based mead the people were consuming, along with raw honey, Buckley said.
Things only got worse in the 1500s, as explorers to the New World brought sugar back with them to Europe. A prized commodity, it made its way to the tables of the elite, and nobody was more elite than the British queen – or more in need of a toothbrush, which didn’t come into common use in England until about a hundred years after her death.
For centuries, people simply didn’t realize how important dental care was, Buckley said.
“Now we know that oral health is a good indicator of general health,” he said. “Dentists are like the gate-keepers for oral health.”
When they examine a patient’s mouth, they can detect signs of abnormalities in other areas. For example, some of the same kinds of bacteria that attack gums also can be related to cardiac problems. These days, doctors often insist that patients take care of dental problems before they have surgery on other parts of their body.
Buckley has been dispensing fun facts along with serious treatment for more than 20 years.
Entering college early, he had just earned his doctor of dental medicine degree from Southern Illinois University when he decided to take a leap of faith and move from the Midwest to the Virgin Islands to work as an associate with Dr. Sydney Hertz, and then bought his well established practice.
“I came down here one month before Hugo,” he said, referring to the hurricane that tore through the islands in September 1989. “I bought the practice one day before Hugo.” Although the storm was looming, he said no one seemed to know what to expect, because there hadn’t been a major storm hit since the 1950s, so he had no idea what he was in for. Ironically, it turned out to be a good thing for him.
Virtually all the senior dentists in the territory had business interruption insurance so they took time off while they rebuilt their offices. Buckley didn’t.
“I was the only dentist here for two months,” he said. He was so busy he slept on a couch in the office to save time commuting. “As hard as it was, everything just fell into place. It was a blessing really.”
While he had the necessary medical skill, Buckley said, “I was 25 and I didn’t know anything about business, about payroll or taxes.” He relied heavily on the support staff he inherited with the practice to handle that side of the operation and to teach him about it.
One of those people, Ura Gosha, is still working with him. Gosha described herself as “the all-rounder.” She works at the front desk, assists Buckley chair-side, and handles some lab work.
“She keeps us in line” too, said her co-worker, dental hygienist Donna Schreiner, who has worked with Buckley for seven years.
Rounding out the team is Buckley’s wife, Cyndi, who handles a lot of the paperwork.
The couple met at a camp when she was only 16 and he had just graduated from high school. Three days later, they went their separate ways so smitten with one another that, she said, she didn’t eat for three days and “he wrote letters every day.”
Even after they married and moved to the Caribbean, a lot of their relationship has been long-distance, with Cyndi living stateside for long stretches because of family needs and Buckley traveling back and forth. Their son, Ethan, has graduated from college now and is out of the nest, and Cyndi is back on St. Thomas.
At 48, Buckley has hit his stride. He said he has no plans to slow down and certainly isn’t thinking of retirement.
“I’m just in the middle of it,” he said. “I love what I do. As long as my hands will let me do it, I’ll do it.”
Buckley maintains practices in both the U.S. and the British Virgin Islands and splits his time between them. Two days a week he sees patients in St. Thomas, two days in Roadtown, Tortola, and once a week in his BVI “satellite” in Virgin Gorda.
