Goats foot dental elevator, made from ebony (handle) and steel. This would have been used for loosening a diseased or painful tooth or its root in preparation for extraction (usually with a tooth key or pelican extractor). Tooth extraction is the earliest known dental procedure, it was used as a last-resort cure for toothache. The instrument is so named due to its cloven head which is hollowed between two points to resemble a goats cloven foot. It is English and dates from around 1830.