ORDEAL OF DENTISTRY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10279, 10 December 1924, Page 5

ORDEAL OF DENTISTRY.

UNWILLING ENDURANCE OF PATIENTS.

As a dentist I see humanity at its worst both physically and mentally (writes a contributor to the Daily Express.") A fellow-creature, lying back with wide-opened mouth and a face screwed up in a grimace of unwilling endurance, is hardly a prepossessing object, nor are my patients in their pfeasantest humour when under my treatment. Toothache is admittedly the most nerve-wearing pain known to man, and the sufferer who visits me .after a sleepless night of torture is naturally short of temper. Still, most people can endure with more or less fortitude the momentary agony of the extraction if the tooth has heen hurting them sufficiently; it is when I must arrest incipient decay that I arouse the greatest resentment To the uninitiated a, tooth is a sound tooth until it aches-, it does mot matter that its condition may be storing up for its owner future hours ot pain; so lono- as the pain has not made itselr felt they do not want it touched. Only the dentist knows how soon that unsound tooth would give trouble if unattended to. The patierit who has endured the '"drill" for ten minutes does not realise what he has escaped, and is only conscious of the discomtort which he has just suffered. And he vents it all on me. To a dentist with a soul the fear which children feel tor him is even more embittering than the aversion of older people. I often have to give pain to children too young to understand that I do it for their sake. If they are verv small they jrenerallv be<nn to cry before the "nasty man, as'they call me, has time to begin. Could anything be more upsetting to the nerves of the humane nasty man"? I would sooner tackle three ! women than one child. j Women are indeed my best patients: frailer they appear the more stoical I thev prove. It is the V.O. hero whose | corn-age never failed on the battleI field who cannot conceal his abject I fear in my waiting-room. The worst patient of' all. however, is a colleague ' of my own profession.