Dr. Evans became the dentist to royalty during France’s Se
cond Empire and confidant of Napoleon III and his wife, the Empress Eugénie
Likely saved Empress Eugénie's life at the fall of the Second Empire when he helped her escape to England in the carriage that now resides at the Penn Dental Schattner Building
First to use vulcanite rubber as a base for dentures and introduced nitrous oxide as an anesthetic to Europe
Introduced a light, ventilated, American-style ambulance and field hospital to the French
Left his estate to create a dental school, making possible the construction of the Thomas W. Evans Museum and Dental Institute at 40th and Spruce Streets, aka Penn Dental Medicine!
Read more about Dr. Evans in the Pennsylvania Gazette
Image source: Penn Dental Medicine's History of Innovation
"How well I remember Dr. Evans, who was our family dentist. He had a black beard. Many tales of his “successes” were whispered, perhaps fostered by himself—be that as it may, he was certainly attracted by beauty … It seemed somehow symbolic of the fashionable Second Empire that for the first time in history a dentist had succeeded in achieving an establishment comparable to [that of] a prince."
- Baroness Agnes de Stoeckl, When Men Had Time, as quoted in the Penn Gazette
