Maigret's teeth

I mentioned the day before yesterday varying our Agatha diet on television with Sharpe, which was a little economical with the truth as we also take in a spot of Grenada's excellent adaptation of some of the Maigret stories, adaptations with Michael Gambon in the chair. Yesterday's story involved a mad dentist, who in a moment of lucidity called himself a stomatologist.

Which, coming from a dental family, caught my eye. My French dictionary helps by telling me that the English for stomatologist is stomatologist. Next stop OED, which explains that stoma is close to the ancient Greek for mouth, with a stomatologist being a doctor of the mouth. The same root at that for stomach, which as well as being stretched a bit has shifted a short way down the alimentary canal from the oral opening.

I think some of the grander dentists still call themselves oral surgeons which amounts to much the same thing - but their nurses are not called stoma nurses, which is something quite different.

Granada had gone to the trouble of making up a suitably battered looking brass plate for the dentist. Unless that is, in Budapest, where much of the filming was done, they still call dentists stomatologists. It might not just be the buildings which are suitably old-fashioned.

PS: I wonder if Sir Robert Armstrong (if he is still with us) is amused or cross that he is now best known for inventing the phrase economical with the truth? He was, after all, an eminent public servant, the Sir Jeremy Heywood of his day.