aries: re the dentist: i remember the dentist coming to our school and giving us toothbrushes and some little red pill that would stain our teeth where we didn’t brush well. It didn’t taste bad, either, but the dye was probably carcinogenic! A shame, it was a great motivator.
Also the TB patch test was given in school. We would watch for those bumps, fascinated, and try to guess if any of us would have to move to Arizona or wherever those sanitoriums were, like Annie Sullivan (sp?) and her brother Jimmy in The Miracle Worker (which we all had to read for class).